Hi just installed Mandriva 2008 on my LG E500, dual boot with windows vista. Mandriva is finding both of my Network cards just fine, however the wireless Atheros card isnt working correctly. When i go into network manager it doesnt give me any SSID's to log into. When I know that one is available. When I try to use the setup wizard I get an error, from my memory something along the lines of "unable to find network device using (ath_pci)"

I am very new to Linux, any recommendations are appreciated!

I have a belkin wireless pci network card, it it also uses the atheros chipset.

I use dkms-madwifi for that card, and pretty sure it will work for you as well.

Will need to make sure your kernel sources are installed, pretty much the most simple is if you have a laptop, which I assume you do, make sure have kernel-laptop-latest kernel-source-latest kernel-laptop-devel-latest

or to install all of this in one shot, type as root,

urpmi kernel-laptop-latest kernel-source-latest kernel-laptop-devel-latest dkms-madwifi

and then configure your atheros card as normal.

Hi thanks for the great reply.

You are right it is a laptop. I ran the command you suggested in Konsole as root.

This is the return:

No package named kernel-laptop-latest
No package named kernel-source-latest ...

same for the others.

You do not have online repositories set up then. A good resource on the topic is here > http://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...yurpmi.zarb.org

I personaly use http://easyurpmi.zarb.org select your mirrors that are closest to you and follow the commands given.

When you have the mirrors added, then go ahead and try the package installation and you should be able to install them.

Thank you again Dark, great info. I am new to Linux like I said and I LOVE the way you can update your system like this! I added Easy Urpmi and installed the urpmi --auto-select. Then I added kernel-laptop-latest kernel-source-latest kernel-laptop-devel-latest. However when it came to dkms-madwifi it said no package named dkms-madwifi? Do I need to add other mirrors maybe?

dkms-madwifi is in the non-free repository.

non-free does not mean you have to pay for it, it means that the packages contained their in contain propreitary code, such as the nvidia and ati drivers as well as madwifi. Not purely free and open source at least as far as I remember, I'm still sick lol

Make sure you have the non free repository enabled on your system and then try again.

Ahhhh that worked. However I still am getting the same error.

"Unable to find network interface for selected device (using ath_pci driver)"

Would the wired NIC be causing problems?

I doubt it would be the wired NIC, but being unable to find the interface is odd.

That being said, are you sure it's an Atheros card? I just looked the laptop up from LG's site, and the card listed for the e500 is the Intel® Pro/Wireless 3945ABG(802.11a/b/g) or 802.11b/g

As far as I know they use their own chipset and not Atheros.

http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/e500_1_6.jhtml

Hmm I hadnt looked into that. Mandriva is recognizing it as an Atheros, so I assumed it was.

I don't understand why it is reconizing it as an Atheros if it is an intel, if that is the case...my laptop was supposed to have a Atheros Card in it and instead it has a broadcom, not to mention a x800 instead of a x600 graphics card. so...

if it does use an intel then the package would be iwlwifi-3945-ucode not sure if there is a dkms package or if it even needs one.

What does Vista say for a wireless card?

Under Device Manager in Vista it has it listed as Atheros AR5007EG, and it is working. For some reason I guess it is a different NIC then the site lists.

The AR5007 is the newest series, could it be that the madwifi driver isnt new enough?

From what I can tell Mandriva isnt allowing ath_pci to install, or load.

Looking into that further, I did find the card AR5007EG and it states that it works with the latest snapshot of madwifi and a patch...I can look into it more in a couple hours, but heres what a simple search turned up.

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/atheros-5007eg-w...6-platform.html

That worked! thanks so much. Was getting really frustrated. I have been doing lots of searching but I dont think I ever actually searched for 5007eg.

Thanks again!

Glad you got it fixed and your queit welcome!