Just installed madwifi drivers from source on open suse 10.2 the trouble is i can only browse the net as root.I think the problem is when i try make without being root i get "touch: cannot touch `svnversion.h': Permission denied"?
Any help much appreciated

Just to make sure: did you know that you can download madwifi for openSUSE 10.2 from the madwifi website?
==> http://madwifi.org/suse/10.2

Unless you really need to compile this yourself, I'd recommend using the prepackaged version.
I hope that helps.

I need to patch my drivers so have to build from source.And because suse 10.2 never had any madwifi drivers on disk??

Yes, you're correct; openSUSE 10.2 doesn't ship with the madwifi module. I assumed you might have access to another computer, as I thought that is how you got the madwifi source code.

In any case it would help to have more info, because it isn't very clear what you have done exactly right up until you get that error message. (Which I am guessing is due to trying to build the module as a regular user in a directory where you have insufficient privileges.)
I hope that helps.

type then if that doesn't work, you'll have to do

Ive done a sudo make and install with installs fine for root but for my users i havn't got access to wireless tools ie ifconfig,iwlist ect.So i still got to connect to my access point as root,but once connected users can now browse the net?

Oh, that conundrum. The tools are there, they're just stored in /usr/local/sbin, which normal users don't have included in their PATH. You can create links into /usr/local/bin...

Nevermind. A better way to use Wireless networking on Linux computers is called NetworkManager. It works with madwifi (I should know…) and is included in openSuSE 10.2. Go to YaST, click Network Devices, then Network Card, then select "User Controlled with NetworkManager". The only downside is that there isn't a Command Line tool to connect to networks (Ironic, isn't it).