I have read several threads on this topic.

I am currently messing with FC5 on a HP Compaq nc4000 laptop.

I am trying to make madwifi-0.9.2 for my atheros AR5212 (lspci says) onboard wireless device.

It wouldn't compile with kernel 2.6.18.2200 - so I began the all too familiar and futile kernel fiddling which is gradually destroying my life.

I have rpm'd to kernel 2.6.17-1.2187 (which is in use on many of my other machines).

If I try to yum install kernel-devel, then it keeps installing the source for 2.6.18.2200 which I understand from other threads is standard behaviour (though not very helpful - why would you want to install a bunch of source for a kernel you don't have unless you're building a new one?).

Anyway.

If I try to rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.src.rpm then it spits out a load of brewer warnings and rapidy zips through the progress hashes and exits having done nothing. When I look in /usr/src/kernels there is nothing there.

Can someone tell me what's going on with the source install problems above ? I run into these sort of problems every single time I mess with yum/kernel/rpm.

I just want to get my wifi working...

If you want to install a lower version rpm which is available in the repository then you can do
yum install kernel-devel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.i686.rpm
else you can download and install with rpm -ivh kernel-devel-2.6.17-1.2187_FC5.i686.rpm

Thanks sn68. I will no doubt need your advice again sometime in the future, however I gave up with trying to get the source for 2.6.17-1.2187.

I went back to kernel 2.6.18-2200_FC5. Then I yummed the kernel-devel. This got me back to square one.

I could not compile madwifi-0.9.2 - there's an error (sorry no details).

I got the correct rpms (from http://atrpms.net/dist/fc5/madwifi) for my arch/kernel version / madwifi version. There are three to install in all (carefully selected from a list of about 85!!).

There is a circular reference in the kmdl & hal-kmdl rpms so I needed to install with --nodeps option (which I don't like doing).

Once this was done, I eventually got the card working - just about. I now need to try get the thing configured properly in /etc/sysconfig/networking - which I can do.

I don't intend to be in anyway disrepectful to the excellent work of the driver programmers & engineers out there but - am I the only one who thinks wifi support in Linux is just too flaky for Joe Public?

I would have thought that after the installer got the hdd/monitor/keyboard/mouse working, wifi would be next (?!?!?!?!).