[tlinux-users 00097] Re: tlinux-users Digest, Vol 20, Issue 1

[David C. Rankin]

gerald mcdaniel wrote:
> Hi I finally got tired of messing with fedora 9 on my satellite L305-S5865
> and installed my Fedora 8 DVD. There were 247 or so updates to bring it up
> to snuff after the installation but so far all is good except for one small
> thing...the wireless card refuses to work. I have gotten the madwifi driver
> from atheros but sadly I am not guru enough to get it installed. Linux books
> and instructions are always vague and incomplete enough that I get hung up
> when trying to figure out if I was supposed to change a directory or not or
> some mundane thing like that. As a result I usually give up after awhile.
> Also I usually find out later that the problem was not so much that I didn't
> understand what to do so much as that the thing wasn't going to work no
> matter whether I did it right or not LOL. Oh well I guess that is what makes
> me not be able to leave Linux alone, The never ending challenge I mean.
> 
> Sorry for the rant, Any way for the most part Linux is up and running with
> kernel 2.6.25.6-27. My next challenge is to actually install a new kernel
> which I have never actually made it through the "make config" part no matter
> whether I use menuconfig or xconfig. Happy computing
> 

Gerald,

	On the satellite P205D, the problem is that the newer version of atheros card 
in the box (Atheros AR5006(7), etc.) isn't/wasn't supported by the existing 
madwifi driver regardless of the madwifi backend (hal or ath5k). I have 
installed an updated version of the driver on 205D machines under openSuSE 10.3 
and openSuSE 11.0. If you would like to try installing from the source rpm or 
just installing the source rpm and rebuilding from source, you can download the 
latest driver (which was the only one that worked for me) at:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/schmolle1980/openSUSE_11.0_Update/src/madwifi-r3725+AR5007EG-2.2.src.rpm

	This was the most difficult challenge I had ever had with an atheros card. 
Most of the time they are simple to install. If I were in your situation,  I 
would install the source rpm, modify the spec file and then use rpmbuild to 
compile and install the driver. The key to the whole driver install is getting 
the proper ath_pci.ko kernel module built. Once build make sure you have it 
properly installed in your kernel source tree and loaded with "modprobe 
ath_pci" before you continue trying to configure the driver.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com