Installing Madwifi using YUM and Livna

by bobjensen — last modified Mar 07, 2008 10:00 PM

— filed under: Wireless

In the past using the madwifi modules from the Livna repository was a no brainer.

Requirements

Read our Getting Started with Wireless Guide.
This assumes you have a working Fedora installation and that you have configured yum to use rpm.livna.org

Doing the work

Update your system
```
su -c "yum update"
```
If your kernel was among the items updated you will want to reboot.
Install the kernel module and other parts
```
su -c "yum install madwifi kmod-madwifi"
```
This installs the Kernel Module Module for a standard kernel. There are 4 versions available for i386 kmod-madwifi kmod-madwifi-kdump kmod-madwifi-smp kmod-madwifi-xen0
Add the following lines to your /etc/modprobe.conf as root
```
## Start Atheros Stuff
alias wifi0 ath_pci
alias ath0 ath_pci
options ath_pci autocreate=sta
## End Atheros Stuff
```
If "alias wifi0 ath_pci" is listed already please omit it from your addition.
Reboot
Configure your ath0 wireless card normally
```
su -c "system-config-network"
```

Troubleshooting

How to test

ping yahoo.com

The results should appear as below

PING yahoo.com (216.109.112.135) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from w2.rc.vip.dcn.yahoo.com (216.109.112.135): icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=274 ms
64 bytes from w2.rc.vip.dcn.yahoo.com (216.109.112.135): icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=290 ms
64 bytes from w2.rc.vip.dcn.yahoo.com (216.109.112.135): icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=305 ms
64 bytes from w2.rc.vip.dcn.yahoo.com (216.109.112.135): icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=318 ms
64 bytes from w2.rc.vip.dcn.yahoo.com (216.109.112.135): icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=305 ms

--- yahoo.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 5018ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 274.589/298.836/318.172/14.934 ms, pipe 2

Common problems and fixes

An anaconda bug in FC6 may have caused you to end up with an i586 kernel on your system. You can check this with one of the following two commands:
```
su -c "yum -d 0 list kernel"
rpm -qa  --qf '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n' 'kernel*'
```
if you see "kernel.i586 Installed" please follow the suggested resolution listed here https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=211941#c24. Once you have removed the .i586 kernel complete the steps above and you should have no issues.

More Information

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net

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