Madwifi on Fedora Core 3

[Robert Locke]

On Mon, 2005-05-30 at 20:52 -0400, Bill Johnson wrote:
> OK... I'm tearing my hair out on this one.  I recently upgraded from 
> Fedora Core 1 (actually, it was a clean install) to Fedora Core 3.  I 
> use a Netgear HA501 (80211.A) wireless card, which I had working under 
> Core 1.  It took me weeks at that time, as I recall, and was easily the 
> closest I've come to giving up on Linux.  Now, I'm in the same boat.  
> I've spent hours searching for every error message on Google, tried to 
> use the #MADWIFI irc channel (got no response), and still cannot get it 
> to work.
> 
> SO... is there anybody on this group who has this working with Fedora 
> Core 3, and would be willing to correspond with me to get it working?  
> If I plug my mepis CD in, the thing works perfectly.  But for some 
> reason, it is stumping me with FC3.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
> 
> Bill J.
> 

Hey Bill,

I'm running it, and been pretty happy.  Though I am not using any of the
newer WPA type things.  I have a simple WEP key setup and sending this
email to you right now on it.

Heading to bed shortly, but should be online all day tomorrow (teaching
a class in New York) - not sure what time zone you're in....

Just to get you started, I use the following script to get the driver
installed:


> #!/bin/bash
> #
> # update_madwifi.sh
> #
> # Presumes that we have upgraded and booted to a new kernel.
> 
> #cp /boot/config-$(uname -r) /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build/.config
> cd /Download
> rm -rf madwifi
> mkdir madwifi
> cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/madwifi co madwifi
> cd madwifi
> #export CC=/usr/bin/gcc32
> make
> make install
> 

The two commented lines were needed at various times as I have used this
script since FC1, in one form or another.

The other challenge was to get things happy with kudzu and system-
config-network....  Bottom line I ended up with the following....

Ended up with the following line in /etc/modprobe.conf
> alias ath0 ath_pci

Then I have in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ath0

> # Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5211 802.11ab NIC
> DEVICE=ath0
> ONBOOT=yes
> BOOTPROTO=dhcp
> HWADDR=<your hardware address here>
> NETMASK=
> DHCP_HOSTNAME=
> IPADDR=
> DOMAIN=
> GATEWAY=
> TYPE=Wireless
> ESSID=<your key here>
> CHANNEL=1
> MODE=Managed
> RATE=Auto
> USERCTL=no
> PEERDNS=yes
> IPV6INIT=no
> 

Then there is an /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/keys-ath0
> KEY=<your key here>

Hope that can get you started.  Let me know how you make out in the
morning.....

--Rob