[magicdanw]

Hey! I'm a Windows XP user, who has recently decided to take a look at Linux. I was pointed towards Fedora, and have successfully installed the Core 3 Distribution. It looks great, but I have a hardware problem, which seems to be one of the most common linux hardware issues: The wifi card.

I am using a Linksys WUSB11 v.2.8 card. I have seen one or two ways to get it to work, but being a newbie, have been unable to execute them properly (or so it seems) and have been unsuccessful.

Anyway, if anyone knows anything about this card, I'd love to hear about it. If not, can anyone suggest any (hopefully inexpensive) 802.11b cards that will work with Fedora Core 3 (preferably w/o installing further drivers; ie. it's natively supported)? Thanks!

[tsunam]

wifi honestly is a beast at the current time in linux. Its made a lot of progress but has a good way to go. Do you know which chipset the card you have uses? nevermind in looking its uses the prism2 chipset (actually a good thing). The drivers for it come from ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/ <---the latest prerelease is 26 right now. You might want to check out fedora's package manager to see if it has the wlan-ng already (be surprised if it doesn't).

That's the first step. After the first step is done (and i'm not at work, about to get off) we'll continue from here.

[magicdanw]

Ok, when I get a chance (maybe tomorrow) I'll try this. Howver, I'm pretty sure this uses the atmel at76c503a chipset. Note that there are several models of the WUSB11, each with a different chipset. The 2.8 model seems to be the one that nobody can configure. Perhaps you are looking at another model? (I think the others are 2.5, 2.6, and 3.0).

[magicdanw]

Hey. I tried the program anyway, and I think it installed fine. I tried to do the configuration, but when I ran the initialization command (modprobe.......) I got an error. The readme said it might work with no manual configuration, so I undid all the changes, but I got the same error. I tried rebooting, but then it said modprobe wasn't a command. (Even in root) I am thereby convinced that......I haven't a clue what's wrong, and eagerly await a response as to where to go from here.

Thanks for all your help so far!

[Squashman]

modprobe is not in your path.

[jfriberg@unixlusers jfriberg]$ whereis modprobe
modprobe: /sbin/modprobe /usr/share/man/man8/modprobe.8.gz
[jfriberg@unixlusers jfriberg]$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/jfriberg/bin

[magicdanw]

Ok. So, how do I go about adding it to the path? Remember, I'm completely new to linux here. Also, which one do I add (or both)? modprobe or modprobe.8.gz?

Thanks for the quick reply!

[Squashman]

just run the command with the path.

/sbin/modprobe

[magicdanw]

Thanks. It turns out, I was trying to run it in my account, where I can't run modprobe anywhere. I went into root, where it's in the path, and ran it. Here's the error that I got (and have gotten each time I tried, with or without the configurations):

[root@localhost ~]# modprobe prism2_usb prism2_doreset=1
WARNING: Error inserting p80211 (/lib/modules/2.6.9-1.667/linux-wlan-ng/p80211.ko): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting prism2_usb (/lib/modules/2.6.9-1.667/linux-wlan-ng/prism2_usb.ko): Invalid module format
[root@localhost ~]#

I looked at both files in emacs (that's the text editor, right?) but they were in machine code (or some other non-human code) so I don't think it was a file I miscofigured, although I could be wrong.

Anyway, thanks again!

[jakoval]

Just a couple of observations:
- Looks like that may be a driver for prism chipset you're installing, but you said you think the card is atmel based?

- As tsunam mentions, wifi is a work in progress as far as linux goes at this time; that's particularly true with usb-based wifi devices. You may want to consider a pci or pcmcia device (not clear whether you're working with a laptop or desktop). I've had good luck with prism based pc cards like the SMC 2532W-B.

Some links you may find useful (courtesy of Brunolinux.com):

Linux and Wireless

Atmel-based usb card info

WLAN Adapter chipset directory

Prism 2 cards

[magicdanw]

Does anyone know of any good PCI wifi cards? (I have a desktop, so pcmcia is unfortunately not an option)

Thanks

[tdi_veedub]

I have had good luck with the D-Link DWL-G250. It uses the madwifi driver. I have yet to get it upto 108MB/S, but it does do 54MB/S very reliably. No dropped connections so far.

EDIT: I have the third version of revision B of the PCI card. There are 4 versions, and 2 revisions (A & B). I only have experience with the third one, so I can only give my experiences with that one. My card is version B3, and Firmware version is 4.10. It is labelled on the back of the box. According to dlinks site, both cards are supported

The driver for it is here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi/

and here are all of dlinks supported cards:

http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.as...ral%20Wireless

And no I don't work for dlink. However, I have always had better luck with their gear for both reliability and support. They're cheaper too ...

[magicdanw]

Thanks for the D-Link info. It looks great! I see on Ebay I can get DWL-520 cards pretty cheap. The listing doesn't have a revision listed, but I can ask the seller about that, and it appears that every revision for that model has a driver anyway (assuming there are only revisions A-E). Thanks once again!

[magicdanw]

Hi. Since I last posted, I got a Foxconn WLL-3500 PCI card, since it seemed to be supported. However, in order to use the driver, I need to get kernel sources, or compile them, or something like that. As you can tell, I don't have a clue when it comes to doing anything with kernels. I'm following compiling instructions I got from a website. I can't find the original site, but here's what it has me doing:

install the kernel 2.6.9-1.667 rpm
do an rpmbuild with a i586 target
make mrproper
copy the i586-smp config file into the makefile folder
make oldconfig
make clean
make bzimage
make modules
make modules_install
make install

I follow the instructions, but at make modules, when it says it's doing step 2, it aborts and says i've run out of space. am i doing this right? Should I need a lot of space for this? I'm not sure how to check in linux how much space is free. I think that the driverloader wrapper might make it work, but I'd like to avoid buying software if I can get it to work free.

Thanks!

[tdi_veedub]

to check free space in Linux type the following command:

df

you should see something similar to this:

someuser@big_gun:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 4964188 3542540 1165412 76% /
/dev/hda5 5462012 422660 4757416 9% /home
someuser@big_gun:~$

From the above you can see that my server's root partition is 76% full, and my /home partition is 9% full. You need to check how fill your root partition is (or whatever partition your /lib/modules directory is on.)

In Linux, you can very easily install another drive, and move your /lib/modules directory (or any other directory) to that drive. Something you can't do in windows without major work ...

[magicdanw]

Hi. Thanks for the reply. I'll try that command to check the available space. However, if there isn't enough space, I'm not sure what I'll do then, because all the rest of my hard disk space (on my two drives) is ntsc, and I don't know of any way to nondestructively resize them.

Also, how much space should I need to do a compile? I'm running Fedora Core 3 with kernel 2.6.9.

Finally, am I even doing this right? Is it necessary to compile the kernel from source before I can install wireless drivers? Or am I supposed to do something to insert the drivers into the kernel source so it's compiled with the kernel? Because it seems odd recompiling a kernel that I already have preinstalled without changing it in any way.

Thanks!