All right so I just installed mandrake 10.1 community after having suse 9.1 (problems with suse..got tired of it)

im connected to the internet right now thru the cable, but my wireless internet isnt working

umm...i have a Toshiba Satellite A25
I'm pretty sure that it uses the atheros driver
so when i go to create a new connection, i select wireless driver, and it can't find one and asks me to select one manualy, i tried a couple of them( i tried the vt_ar5k which supports the atheros ar5k chipset..or so it says), but none of the ones i selected worked.

does anyone know what i can do to make the driver work?
which driver should i choose from the list?
do i need to install a new one?

im a noob and still linux so be gentle


thanks so much

Madwifi is your answer.

Cool

yeah i found madwifi site before posting this...but it says that you need to compile some code in the kernel..definetly out of my league..too much of a newbie...but u gotta learn sometime..so im reading thru the faq to see if i can do it

if anyone has an easier way or a good faq for the madwifi id be awesome

Before you get all geeky, you should make sure it's an Atheros, check the HCL, as well as linux-laptops

Post up your:
/sbin/lspci -v

Some distros package madwifi on their CD's, not sure about SuSE but you could always check (or even contact SuSE to find out if there is an *easy* way to get it on your system).

Cool

all right so this is my config from harddrake...
/sbin/lspci -v didn't work

so it says madwifi_pci
now when it try to go to new connection, and manually load the madwifi driver, the screen flashes(as if testing the driver) and goes back to manually loading a driver. so the driver didn't work.

any idea as to what i should do now?
btw, i might just rmmr wrong, but i looked for the madwifi in the driver list yesterday and it wasn't there..today i looked and it says Module: ‎madwifi_pci in the harddrake utility...i got no idea how it go there, i tried installing some madwifi rpms but they didn't work

and im using mandrake 10.1 community switched over from suse yesterday

My madwifi modules aren't named that, they are:
ath_pci ath_hal wlan and ath_rate_onoe

So, I'm guessing that's probably part of your problem. I don't use RPM's, the most important reason to NOT use them in this case is because madwifi is continually getting altered, the CVS version is about the only thing that really works solidly for me, so unless your RPM was built from last nights nightly CVS build, then there's something newer that you don't have. CVS is not always the way to go, just in situations like this where bleeding edge development is necessary for most users.

Read over the madwifi docs, do the CVS install, re-read the DOCS and see if you can get it running that way.

Cool

i got it with help from the guys at the mandrake forum
i would have got it earlier,,but my urpmi didn't work (ive never used it before this) so i thought that it was a problem with installing madwifi instead of with the urpmi...(i needed to get the kernel source from the urpmi)


so happy wireless finally works :-D

i did the step by step that charles suggested here
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=270688