Hi Kirk, On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 09:43:21PM -0700, Kirk Coombs wrote:
For those have Atheros-based wireless cards and can't use them because the nongpl modules have been removed in Beta3/Beta4, here are some instructions to easily get them working:
1. Go to the madwifi site and download the latest driver:
http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-ng-current.tar.gz
2. Create a SUSE build script from:
http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/SuSE
3. Install the sharutils-4.6-2 (CD-3) and kernel-source (CD-5) RPMs.
4. Unpack the madwifi drivers, copy the build script into that directory, and execute.
5. Use NetworkManager or the ifup scipts to manage your wireless card.
It takes all of 5 minutes to accomplish!
This is certainly a possible workaround for a missing driver, and it's fine. You self-compile the driver. Unfortunately, on every kernel update, you'll lose the driver again and have to update the kernel-source RPM as well and redo the above steps (except for downloading of course). Not very user-friendly -- and that's the reason we have designed something better, a solution that allows kernel modules that are not shipped by us for whatever reason to integrate cleanly and survive kernel updates. http://en.opensuse.org/Kernel_Module_Packages We expect to soon have packages provided this way. Then, that would be the solution that I would recommend here rather than self-compiling. Best, -- Kurt Garloff, Head Architect Linux, Novell Inc.