nixCraft

Hi everyone,
I spent about 4 days already trying to make my wireless laptop work under Fedora Core 6, but I got no luck at all.

My laptop is Toshiba A105-S2001. I have FC 6 installed on it with the kernel of 2.6.18-1.27XXXX. Everything is working fine except my wireless card. I can not get my Atheros wirelss card to work on my fedora core 6 for my laptop. Oh, it is a built-in NIC. Here is the output of lspci of my NIC:

02:04.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5005G 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
Subsystem: Askey Computer Corp. Unknown device 7094
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 11
Memory at c0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2


I searched around and some are saying use ndiswrapper and other saying use madwifi. I already tried for hours with pulling my hairs and sweat out for it, but never get this one to work. Can anyone in here please walk me through? Should I forget this NIC and buy another PCMCIA card to use for wireless? If so, what type of card do I have to buy to work with FC 6? I really appreciate if anyone can guide me through. Thank you very much.

Only madwifi driver will work your card. All you have to do is download the driver and follow instructions provided on their site UserDocs/FirstTimeHowTo - MadWifi - Trac

I suggest you try out ubuntu; it has driver compiled in kernel and someone using it out of box. Fedora don't carry drivers.

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Thank you so much for helping me. I got stuck at the compiling. When I issued the command in the directory like.

[root@localhost madwifi-0.9.3.1]# make
/bin/sh: line 0: cd: /lib/modules/2.6.20-1.2948.fc6/build: No such file or directory
Makefile.inc:66: *** /lib/modules/2.6.20-1.2948.fc6/build is missing, please set KERNELPATH. Stop.



It's saying the file is missing. So, what I need to do to fix this? Please help.....Thank you so much for your time.

Install kernel source code and kernel headers using yum or rpm command. You will also find the same on DVD/CD media. I try to compile again.

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I really appreciate your time to reply and help me. I installed Ubuntu 6.10 on my laptop and everything works really good. My Atheros wireless NIC works like a charm. Also, I got the little software that does a very good job. It is called EasyUbuntu. I can play audio files and movies such as mp3, wmv, and DVD. If you don't mind, I have a question. Some how both Ubuntu and FC6 displayed my video card memory size wrong. My laptop has actual 64MB of video memory, but both ubuntu and FC6 are saying 256mb at the lspci command. I bought this laptop at Bestbuy and everything written down is 64mb. Windows XP sees it at 64mb when I got Win XP on it before. So, do you know why both linux o/ses are saying wrong?????

Oh, I can't play .rm, ram files on Ubuntu 6.10, too. That type of file can play well on Real Player on MS Windows. As I said above, I can play mp3, wmv, and DVD. Could you please help? I don't understand why Ubuntu plays fine with mp3 but not with ram and rm files. Have a great weekend. Thank you so much.

Good god! Glad to know it is working now

You need to download and install real player for linux RealPlayer for Linux - the best audio and video player - Real.com

On a related to note you can also use automatix to install lots of multimedia stuff for Ubuntu Linux --> Home of Automatix

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Vivek | My personal blog
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Do you know why both Ubuntu and FC6 are saying wrong with my video card memory? It is actual 64MB, but both linux O/Ses see it at 256MB? I got Windows XP installed on it before, and it sees video card memory is 64mb, that's is right. I dont' now why linux do that? Do you have any idea? Thanks, please let me know.

Is it onboard VGA card or dedicated PCI VGA card? On board card can take upto 128 or 256 MB video ram from main SDRAM. So whatever is BIOS reporting Linux will show you. You need to use lspci command to find memory size, please see FAQ # 546 : Linux find out my VIDEO Card Memory RAM size using command line utility | Frequently Asked Questions

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Vivek | My personal blog
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It is a built-onboard video card. As I said above I used lspci command,and it displays my video card memory size wrong. Both linux distros see it as 256mb but it is actually 64mb. I don't know why linux shows that. Why does linux do that? Is it because it's a built-onboard card? Thank you.

yes on board PCI card can take upto 256M so Linux will report the same. Nothing to worry here ... move on

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Vivek | My personal blog
Linux Evangelist
Play hard stay cool