Wireless

First off, this is my first post but I've noticed that this forum seems to be full of newcommers having trouble with installs. I appologize that I am adding one more, but hopefully theres a lot of experianced people here with big hearts :)
Anyway, on to the problem

I've never used linux before in my life but decided to give it a try and through doing some research ended up choosing Mandriva. I dled a Mandriva One 2006 .iso and booted up the live version. Everything going well. I clicked the live install on the desktop and set up a dual boot with windows, everything still going well until the network configuration. I'm trying to install on a laptop that ideally would make use of a home wireless network. When I chose the wireless option I got the following error

some packages(madwifi-kernal) required but not availavble

It told me I could get these from http://madwifi.sourceforge.net. I went to the website and as a linux newcommer felt very intimidated. I'm not sure what to download and honestly I'm not sure how I would even go about installing it.

Sorry if this post is elementary, if it should be in a beginer section of the forum or something like that please direct me to it. Otherwise, I would definately appreciate any help you guys could give and really get started exploring Mandriva.

Can you temporarily connect the laptop to your router using an ethernet (cable)connection? You should be able to automatically download a prebuilt module if you can get the laptop online. Rather than configuring the build yourself, it would be easier to use Mandriva's automatic package manager urpmi to do it. Once that is set up you should be able to get your wireless connection going.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bigtomrodney

Can you temporarily connect the laptop to your router using an ethernet (cable)connection? You should be able to automatically download a prebuilt module if you can get the laptop online. Rather than configuring the build yourself, it would be easier to use Mandriva's automatic package manager urpmi to do it. Once that is set up you should be able to get your wireless connection going.

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I can temporarily connect through ethernet. But how can I configure ethernet now that I have it fully installed? Will it automatically detect? And once im connected is the auto package manager self explanatory?
Again, thanks for bearing with me..

You can just go into the Mandriva Control centre (if you can't find it press alt+F2, type mcc, hit enter). You will be able to configure your network connection in there, and afterwords do your software management too. It's all gui based and mostly self explanatory. Just configure your network card (probably eth0) for automatic/dhcp.

I'd also suggest that, after you've set up your wired connection, you follow these instructions to make sure you're downloading the most up to date programs.

open a console window
change to the root user with the command

Code:

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su

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(you'll then need to enter your root password*)
then do the command

Code:

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urpmi.removemedia -a

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don't close that console window
use a normal web browser to go to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ , which takes you through three steps:
you'll almost certainly want the defaults for step one
select the servers which are geographically nearest to you for step two
then copy the text it gives you, one command at a time, into the command line you used earlier.

Once that's done you can use the "Look at installable software and install software packages" option in the mandriva control centre ("configure my computer" from the main menu in KDE) to download the appropriate software.

This may look quite long, and therefore complicated, but that's because I've tried to include everything, in an attempt to make it less complicated.

Hope this helps
Toodle-oo
Giles

*don't be surprised when nothing comes up on the screen as you type.

First of all, thanks a lot bigtom and Giles.

I'm posting this now on mandriva but the wireless is still not configured.

Giles, I was able to follow your instructions but when I got to "Look at installable software and install software packages" I was unable to find anything named madwifi...I searched all possibles (description, filename ect.) but nothing. I installed the two things I found just searching for wifi for good measure but I'm still having the same problem.

When I go to "Set up a new network interface" in the control center and select wireless connection, and then select the default i get the following error

Some packages (madwifi-kernel) are required but aren't available.
These packages can be found in Mandriva Club or in Mandriva commercial releases.

The required files can also be installed from this URL:
http//madwifi.sourceforge.net/

Am I maybe not going about trying to set up my wireless the right way? Or did I mess up with urpmi?
Thanks again for the help so far

:oops: I forgot to check that the package actually was available in the urpmi repositories. Sorry, if I had checked I would have realised that I was asking you to do the impossible. Instead, you'll need to install madwifi the slightly more complicated way.

(Please note: I've not done this myself before, so from here on I'm relying on the info on the madwifi website, particularly the First Time HowTo and the Mandriva-specific guide. It would probably be worth your while to have a read through those yourself, as I may well end up picking the wrong bits out).

<fx - time passes and Giles realises what he was writing made no sense ;-)>

Actually, those docs look fairly comprehensive, so I suspect you've actually got a better chance if I don't try to summarise them: obviously I'm far less knowledgeable than whoever wrote the guides, so I'd probably only confuse the situation. I think it'd probably be worth following the first link (the generic HowTo) all the way through first, and only looking into the other one if that fails, but I may be wrong on that.

Obviously if the instructions there don't help I'll be happy to have a go at whatever problem is left, but I think at the moment you're more likely to be successful if I don't get involved ;-)

Toodle-oo
Giles

ooh thanks for the walkthroughs

I tried to follow through the "first time one" and ran into some problem...but I think these are just simple things that I just dont know as a new user but anyway

first it tells me to

Code:

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svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/trunk madwifi-ng

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which I couldnt get working until I read the page a little more carefully and realised it needed something called subversion and I found that in the control center and that worked.

I got the same error when it says to do this

Code:

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rmmod ath_rate_sample
rmmod ath_hal
rmmod ath_pci
rmmod wlan_scan_ap
rmmod wlan_scan_sta
rmmod wlan

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The exact error was something like bash: something: rmmod no such command..it was the same error I got before installing subversion. I looked for rmmod in the installable software but couldn't find anything.

Those commands are only needed if you already had madwifi installed. Also, when running any commands for modules such as 'rmmod' you will need to be root. In the console type 'su -' to become root with root's full path. Then use 'cd' to go back to the directory you were in as you will have changed to root's home directory.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bigtomrodney

Those commands are only needed if you already had madwifi installed. Also, when running any commands for modules such as 'rmmod' you will need to be root. In the console type 'su -' to become root with root's full path. Then use 'cd' to go back to the directory you were in as you will have changed to root's home directory.

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ah ok, I see that now thanks. But since these were unneccisary im still getting the same problem , when i try to run "make" in the madwigi-ng directory, I get the following error

/bin/sh: line 0: cd: /lib/modules/2.6.12-19mdk-i586-up-1GB/build: No such file or directory
Makefile.inc:95: *** /lib/modules/2.6.12-19mdk-i586-up-1GB/build is missing, please set KERNELPATH. Stop.


Any ideas?