1 day newb howto ? installing network cards

rwillard · 02-09-2005, 11:10 AM

So after 20 years waving Bill's flag, I finally downloaded and installed Fedora 3... got tired of buying license after license...

I had what looks to be a seamless install on an old Compaq Pressario notebook. My issue is that when I did the install, I did not have my network cards with me.

I now need to install two different PCMCIA NICs (not for use at the same time), a Linksys WPC11 wireless card, and an old NE1000 compatable GVC card (Canadian remake of the PE-200).

I have downloaded the drivers for the Linksys, and have been lead to believe by my google research that the NE1000 drivers are already there.

What I cannot find for the life of me is how to install these drivers and get my net access up.

Please use small words... I've been supporting/programming Windows for a LOOONG time

Thanks!
Rob

bulliver · 02-09-2005, 12:44 PM

Well, for starters I would just physically install the stuff, then reboot. Fedora/RH has a good hardware detection tool called kudzu that just may find and configure your new hardware for you.

On some systems kudzu is set up to run at boot, but if it isn't just run 'kudzu' at any time from a command prompt. Should find your new hardware and prompt you if you want it set up.

If this doesn't seem to work for you then we need to do this manually....so try kudzu first and tell how it went.

rwillard · 02-09-2005, 07:17 PM

Great! Thanks for the tip.

I have installed the wireless card with no hassles.

I poked around in the network settings, and can't seem to see the wireless lan now. I have removed encryption, and it is on the right channel.

What is the next step?

Rob

bulliver · 02-09-2005, 07:42 PM

First make sure you have the proper driver loaded. Run 'ifconfig' and look for wlan0. Sometimes a wireless interface is also called ath0 or eth1. After confirming it is up and running run these commands:

Code:

# ifconfig wlan0 up
# iwconfig wlan0 essid my-wifi-network-name
# dhcpcd wlan0

These commands (in order) bring up the interface, bind it to your SSID, then request an ip address through dhcp. Remember to substitute your actual interface and SSID name in these commands.

Read 'man iwconfig' for details on changing wifi settings.

rwillard · 02-09-2005, 09:40 PM

Thanks again!

It took some playing around in the GUI Network settings area, but here is my first post from my shiny new Fedora WLAN enabled notebook!

Wish me luck in getting the hang of this thing...

Rob