Need To Get Wi-Fi Working with Fedora 8

[realdean]

I currently access the Net using XP with Firefox browser.

I would like to access the Net in Fedora but don't know how to get my Wi-Fi to work in Fedora. My Wi-Fi is ATHEROS AR5007EG

Help please.

Cheers!
realdean

[waterhead]

Atheros chipsets are supported in Linux by the MadWifi drivers. The wiki entry for your card can be found here. Click on the link about using latest madwifi snapshot and a patch. It seems that you can also use NDISwrapper with the WinXP driver, there is a link for instructions to do that too.

[realdean]

Hi Paul

It states in the ticket#1679:
Important note 1:
At this time, AR5007 support is limited to x86 (32bit)! It's not yet available for all the other platforms that MadWifi usually runs on. We are negotiating with Atheros in this regard. Further information will be provided in this ticket as soon as they become available.

My laptop Acer Travelmate 6252 is a 64-bit machine right?

[coopstah13]

As long as you installed the 32 bit version of Fedora you should be ok

[realdean]

From my current XP, I've downloaded this readily-patched snapshot <madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar> and copied it to my thumb drive.

With this file, how do I use it in Fedora 8 to get my wi-fi working?

Thank u in advance for your kind help
____________
Dean

[coopstah13]

well this is just kind of general for at least installing that, but i'll give it a shot

you need to first switch to root, with su command

su

then I would copy that tar file to /usr/src and then extract it

tar xf <filename.tar>

then cd into the directory it makes, probably madwifi

probably has a configure script

./configure

provided that works, you should be able to run

make

and provided it compiles with no errors you can do

make install

then probably have to run

modprobe ath_pci

or something like that

[realdean]

I do all that codes on the Terminal right?

Thanks coopstah13!

[coopstah13]

yes you run these from within a terminal, the only requirement I can be sure of is the header files for the kernel you are currently running need to be installed, however, I know almost nothing about fedora and yum, so if you need to install extra stuff due to the configure script failing we'll need someone elses assistance

[waterhead]

If you are not very experienced with Linux, going the route of patching a snapshot of the driver may be too much to ask. I would recommend using the NDISwrapper method. You still should download the latest NDISwrapper source and compile it.

If you want to try the patch method, there are instructions about 1/3 the way down on this page:
#1679 (Support for AR2425 (AR5007EG) chipset) - madwifi.org - Trac

This patch is for 32-bits x86 platforms including i686 and AMD CPUs (Thanks strasak!). This patch does not work for 64-bits x86 platforms.
This patch is for the Madwifi driver snapshot r2756 only. Sorry about the wrong information in the original posting.

To apply the patch

1. Download the Madwifi driver snapshot r2756 using the following link and save the file.
snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-ng/madwifi-ng-r2756-20071018.tar.gz
2. Extract this driver source and change into the driver directory.

> tar -xvzf madwifi-ng-r2756-20071018.tar.gz 
> cd madwifi-ng-r2756-20071018/

3. Download the patch using the following link and save the file.
madwifi.org/attachment/ticket/1679/madwifi-ng-0933.ar2425.20071130.i386.patch?format=raw
4. Patch the Madwifi driver.

> patch -p0 < madwifi-ng-0933.ar2425.20071130.i386.patch

5. Make and install this updated driver according the instructions in the "INSTALL" file from the madwifi package.

[waterhead]

If you downloaded the readily-patched snapshot from here:
http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special...+ar5007.tar.gz

Then point your terminal to the file with the 'cd' command. Mine is in /home/paul/downloads/madwifi, so I do this:

> cd /home/paul/downloads/madwifi

To uncompress it enter this:

> tar xvfz madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

This will create a folder with all the files in it. Read through the README and INSTALL files, and any other important looking files. It says to use the 'make' and 'make install' commands to install. You will need your kernel source installed to do this.