o.k. how do I get to a shell, I'm sorry I'm completely new to this so I don't know where everything is. I know windows really well and since different names are used for everything I need to learn the terminology, and the sha1sum file doesn't have an extension. I went to the folder tools in windows and had it show the file extensions and the FC5 mirror had a .ISO extension but the Sha1sum file didn't. they were both in the same folder when I downloaded it, how can I find a user group in malden massachusetts? I really like linux and now that I have installed on it's really cool. and for resolution what does the Etc between the two slashes mean? also I had windows on my hard drive and I installed FC5 in graphical mode, I had an ntfs partition which was hda1 (35GB) then I made a boot patition which was hda2 (100MG) and then an extended partition which had a forward slash ( / )(41GB) as a symbol and a swap(2048MB) partition too. then it said it was going to install or install the booting files, I think it said that GRUB was going to be installed on the extended partition ( / ) but it had a browse option or button and I hit browse and I had it installed on the boot partition. Now it boots from fedora and it says booting in and it counts like 5 seconds and I have the options to load Fedora, / , and windows. when I hit fedora it loads fedora, when I hit / it says error and when I hit windows it loads windows. wasn't windows supposed to be the booting OS? since it was there first and why did fedora take over? was the windows boot loader erased? and how would I arrage the partitions so it boots from windows? it doesn't really matter what OS boots the pc but I would like to know how to set it up so it boots from either OS because it would be really nice to know. and is the whole fedora OS installed on the 100MB boot partition?
can you help me please? thanks.

To find the shell, look for entries titled "Terminal" or "Konsole" in the menu for the desktop environment you're using. There might be an icon on the bar at the top/bottom of the screen.

The slashes separate directories. / is the top-most directory in the tree. "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" refers to a file (xorg.conf) which is in a directory called X11, that itself is in a directory called etc (and again, etc is in /). Case-sensitivity is important: etc is not the same as ETC or Etc!

GRUB overwrote your master boot record presumably as you told it to during the installation. What do you mean by "boots from Windows"? Do you mean using Windows' bootloader? This can be done, but I'm not sure how. Search on LQ as I know this has been asked. No, your installation won't be all contained in that 100 MB partition. That partition is for things like the kernel image, GRUB's config file and other stuff.

O.K.
I typed dmesg and the out put of it was

Linux version 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 (bhcompile@hs20-bc1-3.build.redhat.com) (gcc version 4.1.0 20060304 (Red Hat 4.1.0-3)) #1 Tue Mar 14 15:48:33 EST 2006
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f800 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009f800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000d0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000017ea0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 0000000017ea0000 - 0000000017eac000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 0000000017eac000 - 0000000017f00000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 0000000017f00000 - 0000000020000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000e0000000 - 00000000f0000000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec10000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fff80000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
0MB HIGHMEM available.
382MB LOWMEM available.
found SMP MP-table at 000f7c50
Using x86 segment limits to approximate NX protection
On node 0 totalpages: 97952
DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:0
DMA32 zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:0
Normal zone: 93856 pages, LIFO batch:31
HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:0
DMI present.
ATI board detected. Disabling timer routing over 8254.
ACPI: RSDP (v000 PTLTD ) @ 0x000f7c20
ACPI: RSDT (v001 PTLTD RSDT 0x06040000 LTP 0x00000000) @ 0x17ea474d
ACPI: FADT (v001 HP Piranha 0x06040000 ATI 0x000f4240) @ 0x17eabe3b
ACPI: SSDT (v001 PTLTD POWERNOW 0x06040000 LTP 0x00000001) @ 0x17eabeaf
ACPI: MADT (v001 PTLTD APIC 0x06040000 LTP 0x00000000) @ 0x17eabf7eACPI: MCFG (v001 PTLTD MCFG 0x06040000 LTP 0x00000000) @ 0x17eabfc4
ACPI: DSDT (v001 HP 309B 0x06040000 MSFT 0x0100000e) @ 0x00000000
ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x8008
ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x00] lapic_id[0x00] enabled)
Processor #0 15:4 APIC version 16
ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x00] high edge lint[0x1])
ACPI: IOAPIC (id[0x01] address[0xfec00000] gsi_base[0])
IOAPIC[0]: apic_id 1, version 33, address 0xfec00000, GSI 0-23
ACPI: IRQ9 used by override.
Enabling APIC mode: Flat. Using 1 I/O APICs
Using ACPI (MADT) for SMP configuration information
Allocating PCI resources starting at 30000000 (gap: 20000000:c0000000)
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
mapped APIC to ffffd000 (fee00000)
mapped IOAPIC to ffffc000 (fec00000)
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Initializing CPU#0
CPU 0 irqstacks, hard=c03d4000 soft=c03d3000
PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 11, 32768 bytes)
Detected 1795.033 MHz processor.
Using pmtmr for high-res timesource
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Memory: 383516k/391808k available (1914k kernel code, 7700k reserved, 774k data, 176k init, 0k highmem)
Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 3600.12 BogoMIPS (lpj=7200249)
Security Framework v1.0.0 initialized
SELinux: Initializing.
SELinux: Starting in permissive mode
selinux_register_security: Registering secondary module capability
Capability LSM initialized as secondary
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
CPU: After generic identify, caps: 078bfbff e3d3fbff 00000000 00000000 00000001 00000000 00000001
CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 078bfbff e3d3fbff 00000000 00000000 00000001 00000000 00000001
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 512K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: After all inits, caps: 078bf3ff e3d3fbff 00000000 00000010 00000001 00000000 00000001
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology ML-32 stepping 02
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
..TIMER: vector=0x31 apic1=0 pin1=0 apic2=-1 pin2=-1
checking if image is initramfs... it is
Freeing initrd memory: 898k freed
NET: Registered protocol family 16
ACPI: bus type pci registered
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd86c, last bus=7
PCI: Using MMCONFIG
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20060127
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 0000:00:14.1
Boot video device is 0000:01:05.0
PCI: Transparent bridge - 0000:00:14.4
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PB5_._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: Embedded Controller [EC0] (gpe 26) interrupt mode.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.P2P_._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.AGP_._PRT]
Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
pnp: PnP ACPI init
pnp: PnP ACPI: found 10 devices
usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new driver hub
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
PCI: If a device doesn't work, try "pci=routeirq". If it helps, post a report
PCI: Cannot allocate resource region 7 of bridge 0000:00:05.0
PCI: Cannot allocate resource region 8 of bridge 0000:00:05.0
pnp: 00:08: ioport range 0x1080-0x1080 has been reserved
pnp: 00:08: ioport range 0x40b-0x40b has been reserved
pnp: 00:08: ioport range 0x4d0-0x4d1 has been reserved
pnp: 00:08: ioport range 0x4d6-0x4d6 has been reserved
pnp: 00:08: ioport range 0x870-0x87f has been reserved
PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:01.0
IO window: 9000-9fff
MEM window: c0100000-c01fffff
PREFETCH window: c8000000-cfffffff
PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:05.0
IO window: disabled.
MEM window: disabled.
PREFETCH window: disabled.
PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:14.4
IO window: a000-afff
MEM window: c0200000-c02fffff
PREFETCH window: disabled.
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:05.0 to 64
apm: BIOS not found.
audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
audit(1150327390.784:1): initialized
Total HugeTLB memory allocated, 0
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
SELinux: Registering netfilter hooks
Initializing Cryptographic API
ksign: Installing public key data
Loading keyring
- Added public key EE596B44DDA71123
- User ID: Red Hat, Inc. (Kernel Module GPG key)
io scheduler noop registered
io scheduler anticipatory registered
io scheduler deadline registered
io scheduler cfq registered (default)
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:05.0 to 64
pcie_portdrv_probe->Dev[5a37:1002] has invalid IRQ. Check vendor BIOS
assign_interrupt_mode Found MSI capability
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:05.0cie00]
Allocate Port Service[0000:00:05.0cie01]
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
ACPI: CPU0 (power states: C1[C1] C2[C2] C3[C3])
ACPI: Processor [CPU0] (supports 8 throttling states)
ACPI: Thermal Zone [THRM] (0 C)
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Real Time Clock Driver v1.12ac
Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones
PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:KBC0,PNP0f13:MSE0] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12
i8042.c: Detected active multiplexing controller, rev 1.1.
serio: i8042 AUX0 port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i8042 AUX1 port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i8042 AUX2 port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i8042 AUX3 port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:14.6[B] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ATIIXP: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:14.1
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:14.1[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
ATIIXP: chipset revision 0
ATIIXP: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x8410-0x8417, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x8418-0x841f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddio
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: ST980829A, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hdc: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4082N, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
hda: cache flushes supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 >
hdc: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM DVD-R-RAM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
usbcore: registered new driver libusual
usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
md: md driver 0.90.3 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: bitmap version 4.39
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 16384 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 16384 (order: 6, 327680 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)
TCP reno registered
TCP bic registered
Initializing IPsec netlink socket
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron processors (version 1.60.0)
powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x4 (1450 mV)
powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0x8 (1600 MHz), vid 0x6 (1400 mV)
powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0x0 (800 MHz), vid 0x16 (1000 mV)
cpu_init done, current fid 0xa, vid 0x2
powernow-k8: ph2 null fid transition 0xa
Using IPI Shortcut mode
ACPI wakeup devices:
LID KBC0 MSE0 ELAN
ACPI: (supports S0 S3 S4 S5)
Freeing unused kernel memory: 176k freed
Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 359k
input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /class/input/input0
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 6.2, id: 0x1a0b1, caps: 0xa04713/0x200000
input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /class/input/input1
security: 3 users, 6 roles, 1161 types, 135 bools, 1 sens, 256 cats
security: 55 classes, 38679 rules
SELinux: Completing initialization.
SELinux: Setting up existing superblocks.
SELinux: initialized (dev hda3, type ext3), uses xattr
SELinux: initialized (dev tmpfs, type tmpfs), uses transition SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev debugfs, type debugfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev selinuxfs, type selinuxfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev mqueue, type mqueue), uses transition SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev hugetlbfs, type hugetlbfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev devpts, type devpts), uses transition SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev eventpollfs, type eventpollfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev inotifyfs, type inotifyfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev tmpfs, type tmpfs), uses transition SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev futexfs, type futexfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev pipefs, type pipefs), uses task SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev sockfs, type sockfs), uses task SIDs
SELinux: initialized (dev proc, type proc), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev bdev, type bdev), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev rootfs, type rootfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev sysfs, type sysfs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev usbfs, type usbfs), uses genfs_contexts
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:14.5[B] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:14.6[B] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
MC'97 0 converters and GPIO not ready (0x1)
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.27
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:06:06.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xd8830000, 00:0f:b0:fc:f3:6e, IRQ 18
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v1.2 (Mar 22, 2004)
ohci_hcd: 2005 April 22 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:13.0[A] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
ohci_hcd 0000:00:13.0: OHCI Host Controller
ohci_hcd 0000:00:13.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
ohci_hcd 0000:00:13.0: irq 19, io mem 0xc0000000
usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 4 ports detected
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:13.1[A] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
ohci_hcd 0000:00:13.1: OHCI Host Controller
ohci_hcd 0000:00:13.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
ohci_hcd 0000:00:13.1: irq 19, io mem 0xc0001000
usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 2-0:1.0: 4 ports detected
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:13.2[A] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
ehci_hcd 0000:00:13.2: EHCI Host Controller
ehci_hcd 0000:00:13.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
ehci_hcd 0000:00:13.2: irq 19, io mem 0xc0002000
ehci_hcd 0000:00:13.2: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004
usb usb3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 3-0:1.0: 8 ports detected
Non-volatile memory driver v1.2
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
SELinux: initialized (dev ramfs, type ramfs), uses genfs_contexts
NET: Registered protocol family 10
lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
ACPI: AC Adapter [ACAD] (on-line)
ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT1] (battery present)
ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF]
ACPI: Sleep Button (FF) [SLPF]
ACPI: Lid Switch [LID]
ACPI: Power Button (CM) [PWRB]
ibm_acpi: ec object not found
ACPI: Video Device [VGA] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no)
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
device-mapper: 4.5.0-ioctl (2005-10-04) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
EXT3 FS on hda3, internal journal
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on hda2, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
SELinux: initialized (dev hda2, type ext3), uses xattr
SELinux: initialized (dev tmpfs, type tmpfs), uses transition SIDs
Adding 2096440k swap on /dev/hda5. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:2096440k
SELinux: initialized (dev binfmt_misc, type binfmt_misc), uses genfs_contexts
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
Netfilter messages via NETLINK v0.30.
ip_conntrack version 2.4 (3061 buckets, 24488 max) - 232 bytes per conntrack
eth0: link down
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
SELinux: initialized (dev rpc_pipefs, type rpc_pipefs), uses genfs_contexts
Bluetooth: Core ver 2.8
NET: Registered protocol family 31
Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
Bluetooth: L2CAP ver 2.8
Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.7
Bluetooth: HIDP (Human Interface Emulation) ver 1.1
SELinux: initialized (dev autofs, type autofs), uses genfs_contexts
ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
ppdev0: claim the port first
ppdev1: claim the port first
ppdev2: claim the port first
ppdev3: claim the port first
audit(1150341838.578:2): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2182 comm="Xorg" scontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341838.578:3): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2182 comm="Xorg" scontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341838.578:4): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2182 comm="Xorg" scontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341838.578:5): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2182 comm="Xorg" scontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
[drm] Initialized drm 1.0.1 20051102
audit(1150341852.731:6): avc: granted { execstack } for pid=2302 comm="metacity" scontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341852.731:7): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2302 comm="metacity" scontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341856.195:8): avc: denied { use } for pid=2341 comm="bluez-pin" name="[8210]" dev=pipefs ino=8210 scontext=root:system_r:bluetooth_helper_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=fd
audit(1150341856.195:9): avc: denied { use } for pid=2341 comm="bluez-pin" name="[8210]" dev=pipefs ino=8210 scontext=root:system_r:bluetooth_helper_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=system_u:system_r:xdm_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=fd
audit(1150341858.495:10): avc: granted { execstack } for pid=2319 comm="nautilus" scontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341858.495:11): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2319 comm="nautilus" scontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341858.495:12): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2319 comm="nautilus" scontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341862.928:13): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2319 comm="nautilus" scontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341862.928:14): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2319 comm="nautilus" scontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process
audit(1150341862.928:15): avc: granted { execmem } for pid=2319 comm="nautilus" scontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tcontext=root:system_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c255 tclass=process

and the output for lspci was

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 5a3f
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 5a37
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 11)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller ATI
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge
00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:14.6 Modem: ATI Technologies Inc ATI SB400 - AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)
06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
06:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

the other command that you told me had the same output of lspci, I coudn't get back to you sooner because I had no way to copy all those commands and then paste them here. I had to get a flash drive and then download openoffice.org so they could be read on windows.
I'm really new to linux and I don't know about it so thank you for your help, later.

Your Ethernet card should be working, the module is already loaded. For wireless you can use this driver, or use NdisWrapper (which lets you use Windows drivers). The former is actually included in the stable kernel as of version 2.6.17.

Hi
I don't know what to try, I got ndiswrapper but I couldn't find a driver for it on the list of drivers that's on the website and it said that using the cd drivers isn't recomended. on the other link there was two other links, the first I didn't know which one to download and the other one was berlios.com and I downloaded a driver. I'm going to try it out.

I don't know how to install any of the drivers you said, and I'm having trouble with ndis wrapper; on the installing intructions the first steps this is what it said:


Prerequisites
You need a recent kernel at least 2.6.6 or 2.4.26 with source. Under Red Hat or Mandrake, the sources can be installed using the package kernel-source<kernel-version>.rpm command. Make sure there is a link to the kernel source from the modules directory. /lib/modules/VERSION/build should be a link to the kernel source, where VERSION is the version of the kernel you are running. If there is no link, you'll get an error at the make install step. To create a link, assuming the kernel sources are present, use the command
ln -s /usr/src/linux-<kernel-version> /lib/modules/VERSION/build
Make sure you have started compiling the kernel sources, so needed header files are present. Some vendors ship ndiswrapper in their distributions. Either use it or make sure you remove it before installing ndiswrapper by yourself. Make sure you have the Wireless Tools installed. Again, there is a package that comes along with Red Hat and Mandrake distributions. If you are using Debian you can install the wireless-tools package from the mirror, here.
[edit]
Upgrading
It is always a good idea to uninstall the current version and reinstall the new version. This way, if there are changes in formats of configuration files, etc., the new version will work without problems.
[edit]
Downloading
Download the latest version of the ndiswrapper sources from here and extract it with
tar zxvf ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz
This will create the ndiswrapper-version directory. Change to that directory with
cd ndiswrapper-version.
If you are having problems with the release version, or you want to try the bleeding-edge version, you can either get the latest SVN version with
svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/...nk/ndiswrapper ndiswrapper
or if you already have SVN code, with
svn up
Note that the snapshot tar balls and SVN versions may or may not work - they may not even compile. If you have problems with these, please don't complain, except to provide feedback/debug trace to help fix bugs. However, sometimes, these may work better than release versions, as bugs are fixed, features are added, etc.

what's the kernel version for fc5? how do I install the wireless tools? it also says Make sure there is a link to the kernel source from the modules directory. which then gives you a command which requires the kernel version, how can I see it when running the OS? and the command for extracting the files didn't work.
sorry I don't mean to be a pain, this is something totally different to what I'm used to but I definitively want to learn it.
thanks.

Don't know. Check by running "uname -r".

This is probably easily done with yum. It may be something like "yum install wireless-tools", but I can't say for sure as I don't use Fedora. I think Fedora has an add/remove software type GUI that you can use, so you might want to look for that so you can install wireless tools from the CDs.

Edit: Fedora mirrors have an RPM for wireless-tools on them (at least the one I checked does: http://ftp.ale.org/mirrors/fedora/li.../Fedora/RPMS/). Not sure how to install those, possibly "rpm -ivh filename.rpm", but check the man page for rpm ("man rpm").

What do you mean by "how can I see it when running the OS?". What happened when you tried to extract the files (presumably from the NdisWrapper archive)?

when I tried the command to extract ndiswrapper this is what it said:
[root@localhost ~]# tar zxvf ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz
tar: ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

first I copied it from a flash drive to the desktop and I tried the command, then I thought that maybe it should be on another location so I copied it to root's home which also didn't work.

and if I want to install the other drivers that you guys gave links to; I don't know how because all I see on the folder are code documents which probably are the drivers but how would I install them from the add/remove software panel. and when I mean runnig from the OS I mean while running the Operating System which would be linux.

You need to substitute "version" with the actual version number.