[TriLUG] Thinkpad saga

[paul]

<snip>

I plugged in a wired ethernet card and found that
it worked fine.  Initial attempts to get any of the wireless cards I
have lying around to work were fruitless.  I've got two "modern"
802.11 cards, one of which has the TI ACX 111 chipset, the other has
the Atheros AR5212.  Picking the latter it seems that I want the
madwifi package which I don't have.

</snip>

I don't know about fedora, but under most linux distros, the madwifi
source should compile nicely against the current running kernel. In
most cases it is suggested that you use the current source from cvs.
This of course assumes a couple of options are available from the
running kernel and the source code or headers of the current kernel
are installed.

See the Madwifi FAQ for more details:
http://www.mattfoster.clara.co.uk/madwifi-faq.htm

In a nutshell:

as root,

# mkdir madwifi
# cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/madwifi co madwifi
#cd madwifi

# COPTS="$COPTS -DSOFTLED" make -j2
*or*
# make
* the first make option will enable the wireless dashboard light on a
thinkpad (potentially other laptops as well)

# make install

At that point you should simply be a depmod -a and a modprobe ath_pci
away from wireless.

Hope this is helpful. there may very well be a precompiled kernel
module for the fedora kernel  you are using, so check the package tree
first...

I don't really have the time to elaborate as i have a friend whose car
is in distress on the side of the road. But would be happy to try and
help when I return.

Paul