Hello everyone, this is my first post. I am a Linux newbie and I successfully installed Gentoo from the universal install CD. I am trying to setup my Netgear WPN111 USB wireless connection. I'm trying to install ndiswrapper-1.10.tar I used the tar command to unzip, that worked no problem, but when I type make, all I get are error messages. Here they are: If anyone has any tips...or can translate that KSRC part into English for me, I'd appreciate it. Thanks

when you are making a particular module for your kernel, kernel sources are required ,-
download kernel sources from the gentoo site (matching your kernel version)
(usually found out through the command
uname -r
)

Thanks, now for a question that I am embarassed to ask. What file (or at least the file extension) should I download? I am running 2.6.15-gentoo-r5, and I can't find anything close to that on any of the North American mirrors. kernel.org has the 2.6.16 kernal, should I download that? I have a feeling that would screw things up.

well since you are new to linux it is natural to assume that you don't know a lot about linux, but unlike windows which embraces stupidity(example:you don't have to have particular knowledge about windows kernel or about device drivers to install new device drivers) you might have to learn what to do in linux.
First of all you should know the google which is linux specific
http://google.com/linux
(search for your problem in the search engine, I am sure somebody else has faced it before)
Now about the kernel-
if you have a program called apt-shell
run it(from the terminal)
$apt-shell
then on the shell
apt>search kernel source
apt>install (the package that you want to)
apt>commit
Now if you can't find kernel source for your particular kernel what you can do is download the whole kernel source from
http://kernel.org
extract it
tar -xvjf <file>.bz2
or
tar -xvzf <file>.gz
(read the readme file first)
now from the extracted directory
try make xconfig
and after saving
try

make && make modules && make modules_install && make install
if you think that it is complicated just tell your problem and I will try to make it a bit easier.
Robin

?
pick another mirror?

If you are running this kernel in Gentoo, that means you built it yourself - which in turn means you have it installed - or can reinstall it if you should have decided to give a command like:
which would have removed it - after asking you for confirmation.

In case you dont have it around anymore:
will install it again

2.6.16 is not out yet...

Why did you not just emerge ndiswrapper ???.

maybe i missed something, but why dont you emerge ndiswrapper?

Oh yes - that is true - there is a ebuild for that...
The error looked like the kernel-source was not found - but I might have drawn conclusions too fast...- if installing from source like that, one might need to give that location during the ./configure step if it is not autodetected

Thanks for everyone's help. I am emerging ndiswrapper, and downloading all the bz2 files as emerge lists them. It's taking a while since I have to reboot into windows every time I need a file, but I think I'm getting there.

Ahhhh - that's a different can of worms. Never tried a networkless install.
Yuck !!!.
You should have installed a sources package (gentoo-sources ???) as part of the install. Gentoo puts it under /usr/src/linux (symlink).
You could make it work with the makefile from your initial post, but that looks a bit odd.
If you have a mate with Gentoo, s/he can download the whole package for you.
Good luck ...

Why . If your Windows half of your computer can connect to the internet, why can't your Linux half? I use Gentoo myself and the documentation to get the internet working is great. What are you using to get Windows connecting?

There is also a way that I used a few months ago, to have emerge (or portage, for that matter...) write the files (the exact filenames including the location on the net - the whole adress..) it wants to download to a file instead of downloading them.
Then you can take this file - go to windows or somewhere else with a good internet connection and use wget to download all the files at once.
Take them and copy them to /usr/portage/distfiles and you are good to go.
You will need to search for the instructions for yourself - somewhere on or via the Gentoo website you will get this info

Jomen, that sounds about like what I'm doing, but I just write down the file name that emerge tries to get, then go to distfiles.gentoo.org and download them. The problem is that emerge only lists the one file that it needs, then once I have it copied into /usr/portage/distfiles, emerge tells me what it needs next. So, it's time consuming but it works. The problem now is that I don't have a usr/src/linux/.config file, so I need to make one to create the variables. I definately need to RTFM before I do that though.

mbrieth, I am using a NetGear WPN111 to connect windows. The problem is that linux doesn't support the USB wireless adapter directly, so I'm trying to get all the files and programs I need to make it work.

Yes - it works - but as you noticed - it is very time consuming - you would be using your time better to find the script I was talking about and do it all in one step.

Kernel configuration is another task...
the command:
lspci -v
gives you the info on your hardware you will need to choose the right options when you configure your kernel-source before you build it.
make menuconfig or make xconfig will provide an easy to use interface to do the configuration.

OK - here it is - wasn't hard to find
There is a wget version for windows - equally easy to find on the net.
6-th hit in Google - search terms: gentoo emerge without connection