I am having problems connecting to my network, its password protected with a 26 character hex pass. I am using madwifi drivers and a d-link dwl-g520 wireless card. When i try and activate the wireless connection it says determining ip information for a while and then fails. I think this is due to the fact that it needs the password to connect to the router. I am very new at linux and dont really know what i am doing yet. I am running fedora core 4. Thanks for any help.

Did you try it without encryption? If not I would turn it off for now to ensure that is your problem.
If encryption is your problem I think you set the key with
my card is wlan0, yours may be different.

iwconfig is also useful to see if your card is recognized by the os.

also try
this will scan for your wireless network. It should return info about your wireless connection, if not your card may not be recognized.

Good luck

hey, iwlist ath0 scan gives me this:
ath0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:0F:3D:3A:0D:52
ESSID:"aq"
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality=24/94 Signal level=-71 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
Bit Rate:2 Mb/s
Bit Rate:5 Mb/s
Bit Rate:6 Mb/s
Bit Rate:9 Mb/s
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Bit Rate:12 Mb/s
Bit Rate:18 Mb/s
Bit Rate:24 Mb/s
Bit Rate:36 Mb/s
Bit Rate:48 Mb/s
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100

and iwconfig gives me this:
ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"aq" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:0F:3D:3A:0D:52
Bit Rate:36 Mb/s Tx-Power:50 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retryff RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption key:6161-6161-6161-6161-6161 Security mode:restricted
Power Managementff
Link Quality=19/94 Signal level=-76 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:5 Invalid misc:5 Missed beacon:0

this doesnt really make much sense to me but hopefully it shows you guys where i have gone wrong. I tried to disable the password on my router but it resulted in my router not working for any of the computer connected to it. with the password re-enabled they all work except the one with linux. thanks again for any help

I guess you could try setting it with a static ip address, maybe dhcp is falling flat, I had problems with dhcp using my wireless, if you can then ping your router you can set your default gateway manually, if you can't then I guess you should take a closer look at your encryption setup.