IBM T42 and Wireless

[Lazydog]

Hello everyone,

I have just installed Scientific Linux v5.3, which is built off of Redhat, on an IBM T42 Laptop. Thus far everything is working except wireless. This is my first time dealing with wireless and I'm looking for some pointers from anyone who can help.

Presently I have the following;

# cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel

network={
        ssid="any"
        key_mgmt=NONE
}

# cat /etc/modprobe.conf
alias eth0 e1000
alias scsi_hostadapter ata_piix
alias wlan0 ath5k
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-intel8x0 index=0
remove snd-intel8x0 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0

# lspci
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Mobile) (rev 03)
02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

My home wireless network is running with WPA encryption. How can I get this laptop setup to connect to my wireless network at home? I would be most thankful for any and all help.

[waterhead]

You have an Atheros based wireless. If this were a more modern distro I would say to install the compat-wireless driver package. But that requires a kernel of 2.6.22 or newer.

You should be able to get this working with the Madwifi drivers.

madwifi-project.org - Trac

If the standard madwifi driver doesn't work either, you may need to try one of their snapshot versions:

snapshots.madwifi.org

I had to use a madwifi-hal version for the wireless in my Eee PC.

[Lazydog]

Thnx for the reply, I'll look into this.