Atheros AR5007EG wireless in Slackware 13 64bit - how to activate it?
 

Okay, thanks to the folks who helped with my last problem I now have a working (almost!) Slackware 13 install on my Samsung R60+ laptop :)

"startx" gets me into KDE no problems, so there's a reasonably familiar GUI to muck around in, but I think that I'll need help getting the wireless networking going. It would be nice to do this in KDE, but I don't think it's going to be possible at the moment.

Running netconfig was confusing, as I've never had to do it before. So imagine if you will:

I've just booted Slackware. I'm sitting, logged in as root for the time being, at the command prompt. I'd like to get my wireless card (Atheros AR5007EG) working.

Can anyone walk me through the commands I'll need to execute (bear in mind that I don't even know how to edit a config file yet) in order to get this thing on the internet? I've tried reading the docs (slackbook) and googling, but with no luck so far - I don't understand what they're on about! Win7 does this for me, but I understand that in order to gain knowledge I need to get my hands dirty.

Cheers,

D.

Always nice to help a local user.

Okay, lets see the output from
and
To see whether or not we need to load (or even build and load) the module for the card

Wow, Scunny :) Nice to meet you!
Here's the results:

Looks like there's a problem...

D.

Locate is just a nice and breezy way of doing a search, it takes it from a generated database. That failing is no big deal, especially since the modules are loaded anyway (So we'll fix that after).

Right; first things first. What are you using to connect/ try to connect to the wireless? What program?

Okay, I fixed the "locate" error - here's the output:

Hope that helps, I'm getting nowhere here :)

D.

Under KDE, I just tried to run Firefox (as I would on my Win7 install) as I couldn't locate a network manager which would allow me to enter my WEP key - and unsurprisingly it failed :)

Then I found an app called wpa_gui, but that can't even see the network, let alone connect to it. I've no idea how to connect from a command line.

Not doing very well, am I?

D.

Ah... the crux. Okay, what about wired? Does that work? If it does, install wicd, its a connection manager, and as far as I'm concerned, the best out there.

Unfortunately, a wired connection isn't possible here - well, it is, but would take ages to get sorted out, which is why I'd like to use the wireless :(

How would I go about installing wicd without a network connection? I can transfer files over from a USB drive, but you'll have to walk me through the steps one by one!

If you feel that it would be better for me to research how to do this myself, then please don't hesitate to say so!

D.

wicd should be in the /extra directory on your Slackware DVD, or from that directory on any of the mirrors.

Oh, installing it is the easy part, so I'll walk you through that one ;)

Right okay, lets grab source and build that: http://wicd.sourceforge.net/download.php


EDIT: Oh yeah, or do it that way

This page, Slackware Links is great for all sorts of information, not only about Slackware, but Linux in general too.

Ok, I've found wicd on the DVD - running KDE atm, so it's easy to find. I've opened a bash prompt window, and launched pkgtool, and choose the "install packages from some other directory" option - but although I'm fairly certain that my DVD drive is /dev/sr0 it says that the path is invalid. I tried the path listed by KDE, but that's invalid too! (/media/SlackDVD/extra/wicd\)

Where am I going wrong now?

Edit: Bugger! It's case sensistive! Gonna have to watch that :)
pkgtool installed it, now I just have to figure out how to run it.

D.

My DVD drive is /dev/hda, try that.

Will tell you if it is mounted and where, as would

- All devices when mounted/unmounted are added/removed from /etc/mtab you see. df goes to the kernel and asks it for disk information and returns info on the size too