Hello, new to Linux.

I've currently installed Fedora Core 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp, on a Inspiron 5160 - the wireless card inside is: Wireless, Mini PCI, 1350, BROADCOM CORPORATION. It's not... anywhere? In the BIOS I can see it, and it's turned on, but under the network devices for Fedora it only shows the regular NIC as eth0, I can't find anything about the system having a wireless card (though it was there in windows).

- How would I go about looking for the hardware?


And then another thing; I've currently have a Belkin USB Thumb Drive, from the Network forum stickies I think I've identified it as a "Belkin F5D6051 WLAN 11b USB Adapter" - so cool, I'll download the drivers... and set it up..

- Help? This is all I know, and since it's not working, I can tell there's large gaps of information in my brain.

I tried to follow the instructions from "ethics" on this page: linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=387928

using the command "dmesg" shows up with the additional lines:

usb 4-1: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 4-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 4-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
usb 4-1: USB disconnect, address 3
usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
usb 4-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
usb 4-3: USB disconnect, address 4
usb 4-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
usb 4-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

- when I tried it the first time, btw, it was only these lines:

usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice.

- then I had to leave and when I came back and tried again it changed the lines to the above, so I think I screwed something up.

Anyway, moving on to the next thing in his instructions:

fdisk -l shows:

hdc (main HD) and two other things:
/dev/hdc1 boot:* start:1 end:13 blocks:104391 id:83 system:linux
/dev/hdc2 boot: start:14 end:4864 blocks:38965657+ id:8e system:linux lvm

Which one is the thumb wireless card? =/

I already mkdir /mnt/usbnet - and I tried doing the command line
mount -t ehci_hcd -o umask=000 /dev/ehci_hcd /mnt/usbnet

but I got the error:
mount: unknown filesystem type 'ehci_hcd'

Tried it w/ hdc1 and got the same, so I think I didn't understand his instructions very well.



Anyway, sorry hope that wasn't too long to read.
Thanks for the help in advanced

Ok, for the fist thing, you have installed a Linux distribution named Fedora Core 5 which was released with a 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp kernel. As a suggestion as soon as you can please update FC5 by typing something like (warning this will take some time); yum update

Second a wireless card info can be found by typing the command; /sbin/lspci -v

Please check the output from the type command (as root) for info about your usb memory. Remove the usb drive is already inserted wit a few seconds then re-inset the device then check;

cat /var/log/messages

Hopefully you will see something like;

In this example the usb memory device is sdb and has one partition (sdb1) so to mount it one would type something like as root; mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbnet -rw

To unmount it as root type: umount /dev/sdb1
The usb memory device is now safe to remove.

You can also add a line entry in the /etc/fstab file for the device which looks something like;
Please read both 'man mount' and 'man fstab' minus the single quotemarks for the details and additional information.


And before I forget: Welcome to Linux!

Thank you Lenard, I'll try these things when I get home and post what happened.

Oh, and we're using Fedora Core 5 (w/ that kernel version) in the classes that I'm taking - though I just finished downloading from Novell the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server .iso images and the Desktop .iso images as well, so as soon as class is over my desktop is going to get SLES and this laptop will be getting the SLED.... or I might just say whatever and go with red hat, working in Novell every day makes me want to stick with it, but who knows?


Thanks!