I was trying to setup wifi on my notebook, which run slackware 10.2 kernel 2.6.13. I got mad wifi installed, and am able to follow all the directions in the first time user doc on mad wifi web, without any error message. I hit dead end when issueing command

dhclient ath0

which was replied with ath0: not found

I'm sure I've followed the docs exactly step by step until hitting the said deadend. My Lan card is listed as Via Rhine II and I got via-rhine module loaded.

There's remain one thing that I doubt, that is since kernel 2.6 has quit using cardmgr to manage PCMCIA for PCMCIAutils instead. Can it be that the problem stems from having these 2 exist together? And what I notice was the via-rhine module I loaded was use by 0 (zero), does that mean I loaded the wrong module? lspci said my LAN card is Rhine II. Advice appreciated.

hello! looks to me like a typo, I've never seen a network device as ath0. Shouldn't it be eth0? check the output of ifconfig -a, that should say your actual network devices and configurations

It should have been assigned ath0 at boot. Review the output of the boot log with "dmesg | less"

You also need to edit rc.inet1 as described in this link.

http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/Slackware

Also, I have better luck using "dhcpcd ath0 up" to bring up the network.

Via Rhine II - thats a driver for your wired ethernet connection isn't it?
Do lspci again, and look for another ethernet controller
Madwifi supports atheros chipsets, so you will not get an ath0 unless your wifi controller is atheros based.

tobyl

Here is what I to get my Gateway MX7525 to recognize cardbus cards in the pcmcia slot.

With the stock 2.6.13 (test26.s) kernel I managed to get the cardbus card recognized.

First I installed (like I have done 20 times before, lol) the madwifi-ng driver (make and make install).

Second I added this to my /etc/lilo.conf.
append="irqpoll pci=assign-busses"

Third I added -f to the CARDMGR_OPTS= in the /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia file. Looks like this.
CARDMGR_OPTS=-f

Fourth, I removed port 0x800-0x8ff and port 0xc00-0xcff from the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts.

Then I rebooted and it worked like a charm.

edit: ignore this - was getting posters muddled

No it isn't, Via Rhine II is a chipset of my notebook's onboard LAN controller, and I use a Dlink PCMCIA card (can't remember the model) on this notebook which has atheros chip. Therefore lspci displayed both pieces of the hardware.

Ok thats fine, its just that you seemed to talking about via rhine in your first post.
As shepper said, it would normally get loaded at boot, and you would see the module ath_pci in your lsmod output.
So I guess the next question is do you see the ath_pci module? Do you have hotplug enabled?
Does modprobe ath_pci have any effect?
I am no expert on this, but I understand that pcmcia cards are 16 bit, and cardbus are 32 bit. Many older laptops (including mine) often have two slots, only one of which is cardbus, ie 32 bit, so it may make a difference which slot you use.
If the driver loads ok, then running the command ifconfig -a should show wifi0 and ath0.
tobyl