I am using a Sony Vaio laptop (Model PCG-GRT915M) with dual boot for XP Home and Fedora Core 2 installed. The distro install came with kernel version 2.6.5-1.358, but I have compiled my own kernel from the 2.6.11.5 source code. I am having difficulty in getting Linux to recognise the laptop's built in Wireless adapter.

In windows XP the device manager tells me the Wireless card installed is a "Lan Express IEEE 802.11g" card. I have read on various forums that the orinoco adapter is compatible with this card, but have had little luck with it. I am having doubts about whether I have installed the orinoco drivers correctly.

Under xconfig for my current kernel, I have available as a module "Hermes 802.11b chipset support (Orinoco/Prism2/Symbol)". Various guides I have seen on the internet have suggested that to put the Orinoco driver into the kernel I need to use:

"/sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci"

And imply that this should be available in my kernel version. However, executing the above command tells me the module is not found.

Performing a "modprobe -l" does return the module "/lib/modules/2.6.11.5/kerneldrivers/net/wireless/orinoco.ko" however.

At this point I don't know if orinoco is installed correctly or not. I am using the KDE desktop and under the menu found at "System Settings-->Network" graphical network config tool if I try and add my adapter it first asks for what type of adapter (Token Ring, Ether, Wireless etc) and then gives me a set list of wireless adapters, within which Orinoco does not appear.

I have also installed the wireless tools & extensions by Jean Tourrihes working for HP.

After the failure of Orinoco and not knowing what to do next I tried to use MadWifi which I had also seen suggested elsewhere. What I had unpacked from the tar file looks exactly the same as the wireless tools mentioned above. A readme file on the madwifi website:

(Due to too few posts I cannot display this - the madwifi.sourceforge.net server has the file under "How can I get it?" section as "(or read it online)" )

suggests that using "modprobe ath_pci" should install the needed drivers for MadWiFi cards. This also returns a module not found fatal error.

Needless to say I can't get anything to recognise the existence of the wireless card. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong and how to correct it? I tried to download and make the orinoco driver from a tarball archive but that gave me a lot of warnings from GCC when I tried to "make" and "make install" it about pointers not being cast correctly and gave me no real indication of whether or not the drivers installed properly.

Your the third forum I have seen with this same problem, I too am having the same problem with my Sony PCG-K23 laptop... if you figure it out, let me know...

Figure it out... here is as detailed as I can get:


1. Download the Lan Express Windows driver from the Sony website...
2. Once downloaded, install it on your windows partition (if you don't have a windows partition not sure how you will get it out of the .exe)...
3. Switch to linux, open a prompt...
4. If you don't have it, install ndiswrapper (http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ or "urpmi ndiswrapper")
5. Move the driver from your windows partition to a folder on the linux partition... (what I did is: "cp /mnt/windows/Program\ Files/LanExpress/WirelessAS/Driver/* /root/drivers/wireless")
6. Once ndiswrapper is installed type "ndiswrapper -i /root/drivers/wireless/NetasAg.inf"
7. Type "ndiswrapper -l" to see if it says "netasag installed"
8. If it is installed, type "ndiswrapper -m"
9. Type "ifconfig wlan0 up" to start it (Make sure your card is on at this point)
10. Go to "Configure Your Computer" and select the "Network & Internet"
11. Click "New Connection" and select "Wireless Connection"
12. Choose "wlan0" and follow the screen configuring it to your needs from there on... it should work once you enter a valid SSID (I picked "Auto" for Operating Mode)

Hopefully this helps you..

Thanks for the help - I'm going to give it a try now.

I just noticed that you are using Fedora and I gave instructions for Mandrake, they should be similar, considering the program should work for both Mandrake and Fedora... good luck though... sorry couldn't be any more of a help...