Wireless in Fedora

Evening,

Just installed FC6 and am trying to get it to pick up my wireless.

lspci shows:

02:09.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
Subsystem: D-Link System Inc DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Adapter
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

Will the driver already be there? I am using KDE...any ideas? Thanks

I think you need to install the madwifi drivers. You can get them by going to livna, downloading and installing the livna-release rpm for your version of Fedora Core. After that use YUM to install the madwifi drivers.

Thankyou, I did try that but got the below output...where can I get the public key?

=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
madwifi x86_64 0.9.2-2.fc5 madwifi-0.9.2-2.fc5.x86_64.rpm 11 M
Installing for dependencies:
dkms noarch 2.0.13-1.fc6 extras 79 k
gcc x86_64 4.1.1-30 core 4.8 M
glibc-devel x86_64 2.5-3 core 2.4 M
glibc-headers x86_64 2.5-3 core 593 k
kernel-devel x86_64 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 core 4.8 M
libgomp x86_64 4.1.1-30 core 62 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 7 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)

Total download size: 24 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e42d547b


Public key for madwifi-0.9.2-2.fc5.x86_64.rpm is not installed

ive had several issues in the past with the madwifi drivers from livna. as a result i had to compile them manually. this old post of mine is related to that : http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=427540

thanks, i'll try that if I can't work out the above message about the public key. Do you know how I would go about getting/installing that?

One of the YUM options can tell it to ignore missing keys and/or signatures. Since you're installing from a reasonably reputable repository, you could do this without too much security compromising.

Thankyou, i've never used yum before. So I have the rpm installed successfully, how can I get the nic to show up? Any ideas?? Much appreciated.

Sorry, miss post, not sure how to delete. Meant for new thread!

Tom


OK, I have used yum to get the Madwifi to install the drivers and after a reboot, the device seems to appear as wifi0 in the GUI network config tool.

However, I cant get it to do anything under this tool or wifi0.

After reviewing http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/FirstTimeHowTo I have accomplished connecting and surfing BUT only with a static IP and using this ath0 socket. (It is searching with 255.255.255.255, is that right anyways? THought it was 255.255.255.0)

Now I have two questions!

1. How do I get my settings to come up at boot and not have to redo the network in terminal everytime?

and
2. Seeing that wifi0 is assigned to the card after yum install madwifi, it trys to DHCP wifi0 socket at boot and now my startup is VERY DELAYED until it just fails out. How do I take that out of the boot process?


Thanks in advance. Hopefully only a minor noob soon.

Tom

Which desktop are you using? I use KDE, so I installed kneworkmanager which handles most of the process with no problems. (I believe that GNOME has a similar gnetworkmanager.) Use yum to install whichever you want to use (or, as I did, both, since I occasionally have both KDE and GNOME sessions running on different screens.) Note that installing either NM front-end will force yum to install the NetworkManager packages since they're required by he front-ends.

If you intend to use WPA or WPA2 wireless encryption (which you should, since WEP encryption can be broken after a minute or so with tools like airsnort) you will also need to install the wpa_supplicant package.

Originally Posted by WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot ive had several issues in the past with the madwifi drivers from livna. as a result i had to compile them manually. this old post of mine is related to that : http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=427540

Thanks, am checking this out. I am tempted to go back to SUSE but i've just read that they removed support for atheros based wireless devices...who know's why...

Hi Guys,

Ok, I finally have the interface existing and have managed to connect to my network (though i've had to turn off my security for now).

Here's how I did it:

install this rpm for access to the livna repository.
http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm

Then use the below command to retrieve and install the necessary rpms
yum install kmod-madwifi

Reboot

That was it. I now have a separate issue in that I don't have any dns servers defined and am not sure how to but will post a new post if I can't work it out.

Thanks for all your help guys.

Originally Posted by sKiBa Hi Guys, <snip> Ok, I finally have the interface existing and have managed to connect to my network (though i've had to turn off my security for now). </snip>

See my post, above, for how to deal with the security issues. And, really, using the NetworkManager system (and the front-ends) eliminates almost all the headaches of wifi networking. It's very much like M$'s "Network Neighborhood" -- just click on an AP point name, enter the pass phrase or hex string, and you're connected.

Where is the network manager? The problem I am having now is that I have to start 'wireless assistant' everytime I boot in. Is there a way I can permanently configure it using inet?

Check to see if you have the network manager already running:ps -e | grep -i net should return something like this:

$ ps -e | grep -i net
 2000 ?        00:00:00 xinetd
 2200 ?        00:00:00 NetworkManager
 2212 ?        00:00:00 NetworkManagerD
 2725 ?        00:00:00 knetworkmanager

(xinetd is not a network related process.)

If you're using the GNOME desktop, you shouldn't see the knetworkmanager process, but you should see the "Network Manager applet" in your top-left applet area.

If you don't have the NetworkManager installed, try a yum install NetworkManager* to get it. (I thought it was a default installation in FC6.)

hello -- you are better off loading the drivers as a script...

take everything out of the GUI network manager in Gnome or KDE, and do it all by script.

your dns servers are set manually

you have to use static ips -- dhcp tends to be a real bastard

see below...

open up /etc/rc.d/rc.local with a text editor (vi / emacs / gedit / whatever).

add the following to rc.local


# --------------------------------------------------------
# START MADWIFI WIRELESS SETUP
# http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/FirstTimeHowTo
# --------------------------------------------------------
# clearing out the old junk - making way for a fresh slate
ifconfig ath0 down
ifconfig wifi0 down

# creating our new wifi0 entry
wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta

# bring it up
ifconfig ath0 up

# specify your essid (the name of your network)
# what your router broadcasts as
iwconfig ath0 essid "myessid"

# specify the access point
# (the MAC address of YOUR router)
iwconfig ath0 ap 00:00:00:00:00:00

# WEP encryption...
# uncomment (remove the "#" in front of the following
# line ONLY if you are going to use WEP encryption.
# I have only had success with 64 bit wep which is
# a 10 digit key. It all depends on your card and
# situation.
# replace 0123456789 with a 10 digit key.
# iwconfig ath0 key 0123456789

# enter the IP address you want to statically set for
# the wireless card... change 192.168.0.100 to whatever
# you want (if your router is 192.168.1.X you have to use
# a 192.168.1.something number. if your router is
# 192.168.0.X, then you have to use a 192.168.0.something
# number
# netmask is usually 255.255.255.0 -- check with your router
ifconfig ath0 192.168.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0

# adding a gateway
# replace 192.168.0.1 with the LAN ip address of your router
# routers have 2 ip addresses... one that they use to get
# the internet connection from your service provider which
# is called WLAN, and one that they broadcast to your home
# computers with. usually the default is 192.168.0.1 or
# 192.168.1.1 --- change to whatever yours is.
route add default gw 192.168.0.1
# --------------------------------------------------------
# END MADWIFI WIRELESS SETUP
# http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/FirstTimeHowTo
# --------------------------------------------------------

I have always had success with this.