FC6 & MADWIFI

[John DeDourek]

Michael A Peters wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-03-19 at 16:21 +0900, Nicholas Lysaght wrote:
>   
>> Hi All.
>>
>> I am running Fedora Core 6 from an Atholon 1000 cpu, with normal wired 
>> DSL Access (Realtek8139). I have an Asus M2N-TVM motherboard with a 
>> Atholon 3500 single core awaiting installation of Fedora Core 6. 
>> However, this box has a D-LINK DWL-G520 WLan Card, and therin lies the 
>> problem.
>>
>> On a previous install, Fedora cannot pick up the wLan Card. I know from 
>> my eComStation install that the DWL-G520 uses the Atheros Chipset with 
>> the Identifier of 168c:0013. Googling "Atheros" will bring me to a site, 
>> that will give all the specs of my card.
>>
>> My understanding is that Madwifi is like a sort of generic wrapper, 
>> where once it is installed (including, as I understand - linux kernel 
>> updates), it will allow the parent Fedora system to pick up the card (as 
>> one of many Atheros Cards)....I supply the ssid etc....and bingo, we 
>> have wireless! :-)
>>
>> Problem with me is: I am very very raw in Linux. :-[      I think I've 
>> seen somewhere where it has happened, but cannot follow the path to 
>> acheive it. Is there anyone who has succeeded in Getting Wireless to go 
>> using this card, FC6 and Madwifi? I can go "walklan" between these two 
>> machines, as required. If there is anything I've missed, please let me know.
>>
>> I look forward to  your help, and thank you in advance.
>>     
>
> First - verify that your card is atheros.
>
> /sbin/lspci |grep -i atheros
>
> You should see atheros mentioned in the output if your card is atheros.
>
> If it is - set up to use rpm.livna.org:
>
> http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/6/i386/repodata/repoview/livna-release-0-6-1.html
>
> Install that package.
>
> Once installed so that you can use the rpm.livna.org repository -
>
> yum install kmod-madwifi
>
> That should do it for you.
>
>   
Unfortunately, this may not currently work.  Fedora Core 6 (and Fedora 
Core 5)
have updated to the 2.6.20 kernel last week.  Livna claims that the madwifi
snapshot madwifi that they are using will not build for 2.6.20, 
therefore, there
is no kernel module for this update.  They claim to be waiting for 
"upstream"
to fix the problem.

If you catch the problem in time, you can disable updating the kernel to 
2.6.20,
or else set grub to boot the old kernel (2.6.19 something); easiest way is
to press a key when you see the booting "timeout" message (you have about
3 seconds by default) and then use the arrow keys to select the 2.6.19 
kernel
and press enter.

That won't work if one more kernel update comes out, because by default the
updater (yum) saves only the two most recent two kernels.  If you have the
disk space available, as I do, you could change in
   /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/installonlyn.conf
either the "2" in tokeep=2 to something bigger, or the "1" to "0" in
"enabled=1".  The latter will cause yum updater to never remove old
kernels.  WARNING: you will then eventually run out of space in /boot
unless you use yum to manually remove kernels.