Linksys WMP11

[nmm88]

Hi, I finally got sick of windows the other day and my friend told me about linux. Now im running red hat 9.0 but i cant get my wireless Linksys WMP11 to work in linux. Im pretty new to it so i cant understand most of the instructions that i get from sites like the linux-wlan-ng drivers. Is there anyone out there that can help me get my WMP11 configured so I can get on the net in Linux? Thanks!

[Dolda2000]

I would have thought that RH9 would have come with drivers for it, but I'll take your word that it doesn't work. =)

Anyway, can you post the instructions or (preferrably) a link to them, so that we may review them?

[nmm88]

Yes, I thought that Red Hat would come with them too, as i saw that it had wireless capability and linksys is about the biggest brand of wireless products out there. But on their driver list they dont seem to have any of the big names. The linux-wlan site is http://www.linux-wlan.org/ . The instructrions are on their FTP server as a readme file. Thanks for all your help and the (very) fast reply!

[Dolda2000]

In fact, it is possible that the existing drivers do support your card, even though the specific card isn't listed. Almost all 802.11b cards there is are based on the Prism2 and Prism2.5 wireless chipsets from Intersil. RedHat might simply not have added Linksys to the list of card names. On the other hand, since the installation didn't autodetect the card, it is also rather likely that the shipped drivers actually don't support it.

In any case, I believe that this installation can be simplified with the use of an RPM. I'll need to know what kernel that you're running, though. Start a terminal emulator and run this command:

uname -a

Then post back here what it returns.

[nmm88]

Linux localhost.localdomain 2.4.20-8 #1 Thu Mar 13 17:54:28 EST 2003 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

This is the reply i got from the terminal. By the way, is there a way to access my windows hard drive from red hat? It would make transfering that information a lot eaiser (i had to just print). Its on a separate partition. Thanks again!

[Dolda2000]

yowwww, another member of this forum, wrote a guide that covers a great many things, among those how to access your Windows partition. You can find it here:
http://easylinuxguide.com/
Note, however, that Linux has no write support for NTFS. So if you're using NTFS for your WIndows filesystem, then you can only read from it in Linux. FAT is both readable and writable.

Anyway, download these files:
http://prism2.unixguru.raleigh.nc.us...2.0-7.i686.rpm
http://prism2.unixguru.raleigh.nc.us...2.0-7.i686.rpm
http://prism2.unixguru.raleigh.nc.us...2.0-7.i686.rpm
Then open a terminal emulator and run these commands to install them:

su
rpm -ihv kernel-wlan*.rpm
depmod -a

The su command will ask you for a password. That is your root password that you chose during the RedHat installation. If you're already running as root, it will not ask you for a password, but in that case you don't need to run the su command.
Important: You shouldn't run as root! It's an enormous security risk, which makes you a lot more vulnarable for worms and viruses. If you're running as root, create a normal user account for yourself.

Then (if no error occurred), to try the drivers, run the following commands. If you didn't exit previous terminal emulator, you need not rerun the su command. The su command is just for switcing to root, so if you're already root from the previous su command, you need not run it again. You can see whether or not you are root by looking at the command prompt. If it ends with a $, you're a normal user, and if it ends with a #, then you're root.

su
modprobe prism2_pci
ifconfig -a

Please post the output of the last command here so that I will be able to determine what to do next.

[nmm88]

I tried the commands you gave me. It seemd to install the drivers fine, however it gave me this error before i could get to the second line of code:
If you get an error after this point, there is either a problem with
your drivers or you don't have the hardware installed! If the former, get help !
Starting WLAN Devices:wlanO: error fetching interface information: Device not fo und
Error: Device wlanO does not seem to be present. Make sure you've inserted the appropriate
modules or that your modules.conf file contains the appropriate aliase(s).
wlanctl-ng: No such device
dot 1 1 PrivacyOptionImplemented mibget failed. wlanctl-ng: No such device
error: Autojoin indicated failure !

Note:I wasnt able to run the depmod -a command. It gave me an error message. So I left it off and ran from rpm to the *.rpm. Thats where it installed the drivers fine.

Thanks.

[Dolda2000]

OK, I get it. Try to run these then, and see what they return. You might very well get an error from the second, but proceed nonetheless.

su
modprobe prism2_pci
dmesg | tail

[nmm88]

The modprobe command just gave me an error but the second one returned this result:

[root@localhost noah]# dmesg | tail
Linux Kernel Card Services 3.1.22
options: [pci] [cardbus] [pm]
ds: no socket drivers loaded!
unloading Kernel Card Services
init-module: prism2-pci.o: 0.2.0 Loaded
init-module: dev -info is: prism2-pci
init-module: prism2-pci: No devices found, driver not installed.
ip-tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
Ip: driver loaded but no devices found
cdrom: This disc doesn't have any tracks I recognize!

[Dolda2000]

It seems that your card isn't compatible with the linux-wlan-ng drivers. Can you run "/sbin/lspci" and "/sbin/lspci -n" to get some more info about the card?