I'll upload that stuff tomorrow, when I go to work (where the machines are). With respect to your other questions (well one of them at least):

/usr/bin and /usr/local/bin just contain different executable files.... both are "in use" in some sense. With Linux you really never know where the hell a particular file will be... I think it can vary from distro to distro.

It looks like you're learning a lot, eh? I think it's kind of a rite of passage.... everybody has some big problem with Linux that keeps them up nights for a week or so. In the process of fixing the problem, they end up learning a ton about Linux. I know I went through that process with this whole wireless card thing... and the same thing 3 years ago when I first installed Mandrake 7 point something and I tried to get 2 network cards to work as a router. Ugh. Anyway, your stated goal of "learning this freaking system inside out" is a lot closer to reality, no?

jw-

thanks for the upload. well i kinda feel, i've just scratched the surface. linux is a complex system with a huge learning curve, not like windows "plug and play" more like "plug and pray". but i gotta admit though, getting my wireless card to work on windows was as easy as a snap !!! nothing like my experience with linux. with linux, i want to get involved with apache, mysql, shell, perl, php and admin stuff as well. btw, what kinda of work do u do?

ok, the driver is here:

http://www.wbwither.net/ath_hal.ko

and to answer your other question, the linux kernel source is in /usr/src/linux-2.6.3-7mdk

I help run a small internet-based company. So I'm basically a web developer (PHP/MySQL/HTML/XML), a desktop sysadmin (7 Mandrake 10 machines in our office now) and a server sysadmin (5 FreeBSD dual Opteron servers). Although I have to admit I don't have any training in any of this stuff -- I'm just learning as I go!!

Hello all again,

I'm getting errors when I perform a "make" in the madwifi directory.

I get the following 3 times:

make[2]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-2.6.3-7mdk'
make[2]: *** No rule to make target 'Linux'. Stop
make[2]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux.2.6/3-7mdk'
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2

Any suggestions? The directory exists and there is a "makefile" file in it, if that means anything.

Thanks.

voila !!! well i copied the driver to /lib/modules/2.6.3-7mdk/net and my card finally came up. woohoooooooooo !!!!!
well, many a many round of applause to Mr. jw99 <you da man>.
i guess our enviroments mirror each other quite well.

now the bad news is, signal strength is very poor, only 15%. cant even get a site up on mozilla.
i guess alot of folks have experienced signal strength issues. jw, how about you?? how's your signal strength???
i guess signal strength is another project on its own for me to work out. but for now me is

and thank you.



*jestevan: what version of mandrake are u running? if you kernel version is 2.6.3-7mdk, you can download the driver jw99 uploaded and copy it to: /lib/modules/<kernel number>/net
reboot your machine, and it should work. this is what i did too.

Hmm.... look there in the error you got. One time it says "linux-2.6.3-7mdk" and the other time it says "linux-2.6/3-7mdk". Is this what the error actually said? If so, you could have made a typo in the linking stage (i.e., "ln -s .....")

khurrum, to tell the truth I don't even know how to tell the signal strength in mandrake. I just know that it works. The router is a D-Link DI-624 which has pretty good range, I think. Besides, our office isn't that big.

ohhh sorry jw99 that was a typo,
both lines use the directory '/usr/src/linux.2.6.3-7mdk'

khurrum I'm using mandrake 10.0. What do you mean just copy the driver? You mean just unzip it into that directory? What about all the "make; make clean; make install; make permissons and the ifcfh-ath0 file"?

no, he meant the ath_hal.ko file that I uploaded.

I don't think that that would be enough to work though. You'd need at least two more files, which I'd be happy to provide, but I don't know if that would be enough either. There might be other scattered files that need to be updated or whatever.

sorry jestevan. jw99 is right, you need wlan.ko and ath_pci.ko in addition to ath_hal.ko. i was under the impression that you had these. but in any case, you're right you need the cfcg-ath0 file and the necessary perms on it.
i guess the hardest part in all this is making the madwifi package, that is what i also experienced. once you make the package succesfully it creates the drivers for you and puts them in lib/modules/<kernel number>/net. but getting it to make is a buggy process.


jw - if you type iwconfig ath0, it will give you a bunch of info regarding you're wireless device, and at the bottom it will give you the connection speed something like 15/94, in my case. my speed is really sucky.....go thru all this pain, and end up with sucky signal strength, ehhh there's always something.

hey by the way, are you experiencing slowness in mandrake 10.0. if i open up more than 2 apps, my system slows down. or if i open up a directory with alot of files in it, the system starts behaving slowly. when i initially installed mandrake 9.1, i was impressed with it. there was no slowness at all.

here's my partition info: /boot - 2 gigs
/swap: 512mb
/ - 4 gig

btw, will madwifi work on mandrake version 9.1 ???? or does it only work for kernel versions >= 2.6.3-7mdk ???

-k

Hello all,
Just following up on my progress.

I got it working, finally. It always seems like a surprise when it actually works.
The error I was getting:
make[2]: *** No rule to make target 'Linux'. Stop
Was because I have my driver extracted into a directory whose name contained a space (eg /DWL-G520 Linux Madwifi) hence the word 'Linux' in the error.

The connection is not as fast as in XP but I'm just very happy it's working!
(I'm getting a link quality of 50/94)

Been following the course of events and just managed to get my wireless connection working thanks to all the useful help on here. Thanx everyone.

I am also having terrible signal strength issues though...has anyone figured that out yet? I noticed that under WinXP driver there is a setting called "Transmit Power" and it is set to 100%. Maybe there is something like this in MadWifi driver too?

Hi to everyone here. This community has been so helpful that everyone has contributed their big part in solving all sort of problems regarding Mandrake 10.0 and DWL-G520 adapter. But my machine given with the perfect match of the Mandrake version and atheros pci adapter, i still have no luck to set up my machine yet.
At first I used the tarball and followed exactly the guide provided by JW99, but the wlan din workout (web browser unable to load anything) even though it can obtain IP from router(D-Link DI-714P+) with ESSID. And i also notice that the network monitoring program (i dunno what its name) can sense the wireless signal too. It juz wont go online....
Another way that i tried is typing the command cvs -z3 -dserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/madwifi co madwifi , and so i notice that this CVS version is a bit different from the tarballs. It has an extra folder called ath_rate. So i thought this could be the culprit and i repeated the installation again! Even worse, the pc get hung during rebooting, when it tried to bring up ath0. I can't remember the erroneous message thoroughly but it did show the ath_rate directory in tht message. Am i clear with my explanation here? Hope someone who knows about this issue can share your experience with me here.

I don't know why you are trying to compile MadWiFI.

The drivers for madWifi have already been adapted and made available under Mandrake 10.x on the "Official" disks in the /drivers directory.

These are specifically set up for your kernel.

Hello Opjose, yeah, I know that madwifi driver is now available in the latest Mandrake 10.x. But for the Mandrake 10.0 official that I use, madwifi was still unavailable there. And the latest madwifi is still unavailable to me, so I have to do it manually.
So do you have any idea why is that the CVS version madwifi is different from the tarball compiled by jw99? That the tarball one didn't have ath_rate folder. My latest error came from this folder when I tried to reboot the system.