Well, I suppose being an early adopter isn't for me. I've used FC5 x86_64 for some time, and I like fedora, but I want to switch to a x86 fc5. The laptop I am using has an ATI video card that I cannot take advantage of in 64bit and my wireless card is supported natively - but the firmware is only available in 32 bit.

So here's my question - is there any relatively painless way to switch? I would like to keep my documents (but I'm not horribly averse to burning them to a CD) and perhaps firefox bookmarks. Am I going to basically have to remove my OS and reinstall, or is there some yum trick to replace every x86_64 package with its x86 equivalent?

Thanks.

No easy way to switch from 64-bit to 32-bit, but no real need to either.

ATI 64-bit drivers for FC5 available at http://rpmlivna.org ,for example;

http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/5/x86_64....6-1.lvn5.html

Which wireless interface does the laptop have???

It's a broadcom wireless that would be supported natively with the bcm 43xx driver, except that I have to fcutter the firmware from a Windows driver, and they haven't released a 64 bit Windows driver. Thanks very much for the ATI link. Is that recent? I could have sworn reading that they weren't available.

Again which Broadcom wireless device exactly?? Use the output from the typed command;

/sbin/lspci -v

You can find a bcm43xx-fwcutter rpm at Fedora Core Downloads in the Extras for FC5. Or you can build the latest from;

FYI: the native bcm43xx module is not as stable when compared with using the exact same firmware with ndiswrapper.

http://developer.berlios.de/project/...?group_id=4547

And no the ATI 64-bit drivers have been available since; * Sat Aug 19

From my laptop (which I 'm using to post this message), the output from the typed command showing the Broadcom wireless LAN ;

00:0b.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: AMBIT Microsystem Corp. TravelMate 2410
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
Memory at e2000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]

$ uname -a
Linux Aspire5000 2.6.19-rc4 #1 Tue Oct 31 08:36:37 EST 2006 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ cat /proc/modules | grep ndis
ndiswrapper 206440 0 - Live 0xffffffff880f4000

Okay, the wireless card is a Broadcom 4318. Here's the output of /sbin/lspci

06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g]
802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 1355
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 217
Memory at c0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]

Works just fine using the ndiswrapper and the 64-bit driver available here (the same one I'm using by the way). The file named 80211g.zip is the one you want;

ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/note...ver/winxp64bit

Just follow the directions from the Installation wiki at the ndiswrapper site;

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...p/Installation

Well, I tried to follow those directions, but when I got to the end, I discovered some interesting behavior. First, 'iwlist xxx scan' always reports "device does not support scanning". Second, the name of the device keeps changing. When it was first configured, it appeared in ifconfig and iwconfig as 'eth1'; 'wlan0' & 'dev10549' were meaningless. However, I tried looking around in Fedora's (gnome) network config tool, and when I got out, it was called 'dev10549' in both ifconfig and iwconfig. So I tried to bring it down, then up to see what happened, but when I brought it down in ifconfig, it did not go away in iwconfig. Trying to bring it back up in ifconfig brought a SCIOS error about a file not existing. Then I went back to the gnome network config tool and saw the option for the wireless device and checked on the associated hardware. There was listed "eth1 (dev10549" and farther down "wlan0 (ndiswrapper)." I changed the assosication to wlan0, then it appeared in both if and iw config. iwlist gave "no scan results" now instead. My signal is weak where I am, but I can connect in Windows. (I dual boot this comp.)

Yes this can be a bit confusing since the wireless device should be one device without the name changing. The device names of eth1 or wlan0 are good at least you have an idea of what they are, the devXXXX or _devXXXXX device names are not as easy to figure out.

It would be a good idea to blacklist the bcm43xx module when using ndiswrapper. This is done by adding the module name to the blacklist file found in the /etc/modprobe.d directory location, example below;

# wireless drivers
blacklist bcm43xx

It is also a good idea to add a file named something like 4318.modules or wireless.modules to the /etc/sysconfig/modules directory, example below;

modprobe ndiswrapper

Finally, you may want to create or edit the file ifcfg-wlan0 file located in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory, example below;

ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=no
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
IPADDR=
NETMASK=
GATEWAY=<wireless_routers_IP_address_here>
DHCP_HOSTNAME=My_Computer_desired_name_here
DOMAIN=
ESSID=
CHANNEL=6
MODE=auto
RATE=

Make sure a copy of this file also resides in the /etc/sysconfig/devices and /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default directory locations. If you see a file named ifcfg-eth1 you may want to remove this file from all three /etc/sysconfig directory locations. Check the /etc/modprobe.conf file and if needed remove the line for the eth1 alias.

Okay, thank you very much for the help. Now I've gotten a bit farther than the last time I tried ndiswrapper. So, now everything calls my wirless wlan0. KwifiManager does report the interface and that it isn't connected. So here's my new problem. Iwlist won't let me scan for networks. "iwlist wlan0 scan" outputs "device doesn't support scanning : no such device" Ironically, if I pass along a device that really doesn't exist, like "iwlist phil scan" I get out "device doesn't support scanning".

also, if I try to set the essid with iwconfig like "iwconfig wlan0 essid "linksys"" the command continues as though it works, but iwconfig then reports that there is no essid assigned to the device. So, as near as I can tell, the wireless card exists and is set up - it just doesn't actually do anything.

Which version of the wireless-tools package(s) are installed?

rpm -qa --qf="%{n}-%{v}-%{r}.%{arch}.rpm\n" wireless-tools

What does the command 'iwconfig wlan0' show?? You might want to fill-in the the essid value in the ifcfg-wlan0 file; ESSID=linksys

Sample output;
FYI: the ifcfg-wlan0 file I provided as an example is the same file that I use. The only real difference is I use static IP addressing instead of dhcp.

Does kwifimanager show the wireless router (Scan for Networks... button)??

here's my iwconfig output:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.462 GHz Access Point: Invalid
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s
RTS thr: off Fragment thr: off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

However the nickname is usually "Broadcom 4318", not sure why it changed this time around.

My wireless tools is version 28-0.pre13.5.1. (wireless-tools-28-0.pre13.5.1.x86_64.rpm)

KwifiManager always reports that the search was completed, but no networks were found. I always thought that KwifiManager was just an iwconfig/iwlist frontend.

Linksys routers sometimes have a problem with Linux, you might want to check the configuration of the router. They are also known for having a weak signal by the way.

KWiFiManager is a GUI front end to the wireless-tools package (which is OK). You might want to edit the ifcfg-wlan0 file and provide a static IP address configuration. I have provided an example my file below(I changed the IP address's only), you want to use an IP address outside the dhcp range of the router, provide the channel (1 or whatever) the wireless outer is configured for and the router's IP address. The settings MODE and RATE can set with specific values or left blank (which does work in many cases).

ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=no
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.49.40
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.49.10
DHCP_HOSTNAME=Aspire5000
DOMAIN=
ESSID=
CHANNEL=6
MODE=auto
RATE=

You can set your system's name by doing something like; /bin/hostname MyComputerNameHere

My problem is that I use my computer wirelessly mostly on my college's campus. So, I really don't have any control over the router.