[Wolves] wireless networking

[Jono Bacon]

Heya,

> I'm really frustrated...

Welcome to wireless networking!!

> It's working under Windows, with the provided
> drivers; the information I 
> found on the net suggests
> that older products of theirs work with Linux, but I
> can't find anything 
> much on the specific card,
> except that some people have been using "orinoco"
> drivers with it.

Orinoco refers to the chipset used on the wireless
card. In windows it may tell you specifically what the
chipset is. If it does say anything about Orinoco then
that is definitly the chipset.

> To determine what drivers I need, apparently I
> should run the command "lspci 
> -v" at the command line,
> to get information on the exact details. However,
> when I do this, I get the 
> message "command not
> found". Man and info files for lspci are present,
> though not terribly 
> helpful.

Did you run this as root? lspci basically lists what
cards are in your PCI bays. It will tell you
information the kernel can find out about the cards,
and often lists the chipset.

> What should I do? What exactly do I need to download
> / install? Are there 
> any card-specific drivers
> around that I'm just missing? What are these
> "orinoco" drivers, and where 
> can I find them?

What you need to do is to find the orinoco drivers for
your card. These drivers are usually patched into the
kernel or are pre-compiled binary drivers which you
load as modules. The best thing to do is to first at
least ensure the card is being seen as a PCI device.
Get lspci working first (you may need to install a
specific RPM with it in) or download Knoppix and burn
to CD and use that to find out if the card is present.
If the card is there you then need to sort out the
drivers. I know there is indeed an orinoco driver out
there, and if it doesnt list your card, it may work
anyway. If you are dealing with quite new hardware,
sometimes you need to suck it and see and maybe
contact the developers of the card.

Also, check if the driver is in the latest kernel. It
may very well be in there. Remember, do the good
community thing and report all things you find out to
the developers of the driver, and if you can, write a
HOWTO on getting the card working when you have got it
sorted out.

> PS on a related note of pure, unadulterated
> ignorance - how do I uninstall 
> old kernel versions? I'm
> running out of space and currently have three
> versions knocking around. And 
> I can't work out
> how to remove them. Any advice (with or without
> jeering comments) would be 
> greatly appreciated.

First, check the Kernel HOWTO for specific info, but
it should be just a case of removing the kernel binary
(often known as 'vmlinuz' in / or /boot and removing
the modules dir. I dont know for sure, but I am sure
some info is out there on the net.

Good luck, and keep us posted with how you get on!!

  Jono




=====
Jono Bacon - http://www.jonobacon.org/
Web Developer - Musician - Writer - Freelancer

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com