Wireless network card setup, Fedora Core 1...

[Eric Diamond]

Tuesday, April 20, 2004 6:10 AM Michael Mayhew asked:
> Greetings,
> 
>    I recently checked Linuxcompatible.org for a list of potential
wireless 
> cards for my desktop, and have decided on the D-Link PCI WL-520. On
the 
> site, the noted drivers required were the Prism2 drivers. 
> Those, I believe, are not included with FC1. (Or can I use the
orincoco 
> drivers? 

No, two completely different chipsets.
 

> Also, I have seen a package linux-wlan-ng that contains the Prism2
drivers but 
> when I do an rpm  search on rpmfind.net or freshrpms, nothing comes
up. Has 
> anyone found, for sure, the Prism2 drivers, whether included in some
other 
> package or on their own, and, if so, where? Also, since I don't have
internet 
> until this card is installed, would the package fit on a floppy? 

You have a couple of resources for this:

The linux-wlan-ng-0.2.0 tarball (current stable release) at
ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/ is only 321K. The
linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1-pre20 tarball (current working pre-release) is only
345K. Both will fit on a floppy nicely, but that's source, not binary.
The compilation and installation instruction are fairly straight
forward. I used to use it extenxively on RH8 (last wireless linux
machine I ran).

Also there are RPMs at http://prism2.unixguru.raleigh.nc.us/. These are
a bit behind the times, but still a good way to go. There are currently
RPMs for FC1 up to kernel 2174. This install is OK, but still a bit
complicated.

When I've used this in the past, I've preferred the tarball/make/install
option. The prisim drivers and support code are all kernel version
dependent. Every time you install a new kernel, you need to recompile
and reinstall the code. This isn't as bad as it seems. After the second
time you should be able to do it half asleep. Also it lets you upgrade
your kernel when necessary without waiting for someone else to create a
set of RPMs for you (and with this it is a set, 4 RPMs minimum depending
on your configuration).


Eric Diamond
eDiamond Networking & Security
303-246-9555
eric at ediamond.net