Hello,

I am completely new to Linux (always been a Microsoft user), but I would like to start expanding my horizons and installed Fedora 7 on an IBM laptop T42. The install went well except that I don't see my wireless card, only onboard ethernet.

From reading various forums, I learned to run lspci. That's how I learned it was an Atheros chipset a/b/g(XP said it was IBM on board). Please help me install the card, keeping in mind that I am completely green. I also read that you have to download some rpm and compile ( I have no clue what this means)? I hate to say this but treat my knowledge as an infant so you might have to go step by step..

Your help will be greatly appreciated. I'm finding Linux to be very interestng that it renewed my interest in learning something new. Every little thing that I learn or finally getting somewhere in Linux is like finding a pot of gold.

Thanks.

Start with the documentation on the Atheros/madwifi driver site..
http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/RedHat
See how far you can get with that information.
If you get stuck come back and post EXACT error messages you received, parts of your config files where you are stuck, etc..



When posting for help on a specific piece of hardware such as your wireless card it's a good idea to post the output of commands like lspci so we can see exactly what you have. There are many different chips in the wireless cards and different chips use different drivers even if the chips are from the same manufacturer.. Even the SAME MODEL wireless card may have chip from a different manufacturer in a different revision of the card.. it's really rather annoying really

And if you get a chance update your profile to include your distro so it jumps right out at us. you did post it in your original question which is a good thing.

Another suggestion is to investigate a program called "ndiswrapper" and another called "Linuxant driverloader" Both of these "wrap" around the native Windows driver to be able to use it.
Many wireless chipset makers refuse to divulge the exact hardware and firmware specs, making it very difficult to build a real driver. Broadcom is the card that I fight with. But anyway, I have used both of these programs and they both work well.

madwifi is the native driver for your wireless chipset.
Here is a link describing how you can install it using yum, the fedora native package installer. Basically, you tell yum about a new online repository for Fedora RPMs (called livna), and then just do a yum install madwifi. Follow the instructions on the page, Google for any error messages you get. Getting a driver to work is good linux practice for commands like lsmod and modprobe.

Oops!
Link: http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/madwifi-yum-livna

Hi taman,

Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux!

I happened to see this the other day: http://education.zdnet.com/?p=1335

The first paragraph mentions how one distro recognized an Atheros wifi card 'out of the box' that another distro did not.

Your mileage might vary. But, if you are pressed for time, not tied to particular distro, and/or just want to get up and running asap, you might try it.

I wouldn't go the ndiswrapper route since the MAD Wifi driver route seems to work very well. Here it the website:

http://madwifi.org

in case you need more info than the Fedora links listed above provide.

I have this all working well on my Thinkpad R51, but under Ubuntu Linux. The neat thing is that I've installed the extra patches that allowed "aircrack-ng" (http://www.aircrack-ng.org) to work. The Atheros is one of the few that can be made to do "packet injection", which means you can crack obtain WEP encryption keys from "secured" access points in just a few minutes!

Anyway, welcome to Linux. It has a steep but rewarding learning curve.

Thanks guys. I will try your suggestions and will post back the outcome or lack thereof

Hi

I had problems with other linux distros not seeing my wireless card also.
My laptop is an IBM T40. Im running Ubuntu 7.1 now. Ubuntu was the only
linux that saw my wireless card and worked right out of the box. the FN F5
key actally turns the radio on and off. If you cant get Fedora 7 to see your
card you may want to try Ubuntu. Ive been using it since June of this year
without any real problems.

Vanessa

Well I tried the suggestions with no luck. Please see below
02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

I did the following:
-configured yum to use rpm.livna.org/livna-release-7.rpm
-yum install madwifi
-It download an i386 and i686rpm.I should've taken a screen shot
-ran yum install madwifi kmod-madwifi and received an error:
0[root@localhost ~]# yum install madwifi kmod-madwifi
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Could not retrieve mirrorlist http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mir...ra-7&arch=i386 error was
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-2, 'Name or service not known')>
Error: Cannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: fedora

I'm stuck..

Well, I switched to Ubuntu and like what vansch76 said, "it worked out of the box". Thanks for all the tips!!

I'm a Debian user, and Debian uses Apt for it's package installations. I haven't used Yum, but sounds to me your entry in your sources.list file (or what Yum uses to list it's Repositories) is incorrect. or at least thats what I would have checked first.