I am trying to install a driver for my linksys wpc11 wireless network PCMIA card in Mandrake linux 9.2. The directions for the driver say:

"Linux source directory [/usr/src/Linux]:" by default this should be where your kernel is located, if it's located in a different place please input the path. Else hit Enter

but I tried hitting enter and guessing other paths and that didn't work (it said the file was missing). So I downloaded the 2.4.27 kernel from kernel.org and extracted that into /usr/src/. Then I made a link called /usr/src/linux to point to the extracted folder. But now when i get to the step where it asks me for my source directory, it says

Kernel header files are present, but not the full source code.

I googled my problem and found a link on this board where someone said to type in "urpmi kernel source" (I have no idea what this means, but I tried it) and it told me:

Following packages contain source:
gtksourceview
ligbtksourceview-1.0_0
perl-BSD-Resource

Can someone tell me how I can install the full kernel source code? This is the first time i've ever used linux and i'm really clueless about it. Thanks!

Hey, I'm a newbie as well and trying to accomplish about the same thing.

1. You need to download your EXACT kernel version's sourcecode. So check out what yours is and then download the source.

2. You need to run 'make menuconfig' or 'make oldconfig' at least to configure the kernel before rebuilding it.

in order to know the exact version of your kernel:

[root@localhost vincent]# uname -r
2.6.3-4mdk

in my case mandrake 2.6.3-4 ...

thanks for that. it says i need 2.4.22-10 mandrake. where do i go to download that? i've searched on the mandrake site and i can't find it.

I have installed mandrake 10.0 on my computer. But I think the way to install this is very similar with yours.

in a shell console, type this :
[root@localhost vincent]# /usr/sbin/rpmdrake --root

the system will prompt you for the root pasword.
A new window will pop up.
In the search field of that window, type 'kernel' then the 'find' button.
The system will provide you with a list of file starting by 'kernel-....'
Select the one which looks like 'kernel-source-2.4.22-10mdk' . I guess you should this this one specifically. Then install it by following the instructions the will de displayed.
Source should be installed at the end of the process in: /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-10mdk/
I am referring to the way I installed this on my Mandrake 10.
Hope it is the same way on our version.
Hope this help
Regards,
Vincent

So i tried starting the advice above and i think it worked fine, but when i tried to configure the driver, again /usr/src/linux was "incomplete or missing." So I restarted my computer to go back to XP and when the computer asked me if i wanted to start up linux or windows, i noticed that there was an added option called "2422-1mt" which i'm guessing had something to do with the 2.4.22-1 kernel i had just installed off the cd. I selected that and pressed enter and it started scrolling all of these things and it looked like it was installing/booting up something. Then it asked me for a password but whenever I went to type it in the screen switched over to black. Then it turned blue and the computer said, "I cannot load the X interface, would you like to try to configure it?" So i tried doing that and eventually it said it was going to reboot and try to load the X but this basically failed. So now i think i have a vegetable for an operating system. Would it be wise to just install a different version of linux?

Also, i think i don't have enough room on the partition that i made for linux. Should i download partitionMagic and resize it? And is there any way i can do this without paying $70 for the program?

Thanks so much for your guys' help... i think i'm screwing this up big time.

I think you installed the latest OS instead of the source code of the one that was initially installed.

When you choose which kernel to install, make sure its name contains 'src' somewhere.

For partitionmagic, I am not too expert ... but from what I can remember, I had problem last time I used it to resize a Linux partition.

Vincent

HI everyone,
I have repeated this answer before too and I don't understand why mandrake won't install the kernal source file along with the software.

The source files are missing in Mandrake Linux and you need to install it manually. It is called kernel-source-2.4.25-2.i586.rpm This file can be downloaded from the web or from mandrake download servers. If you have the Mandrake Linux 10.0 then it can be found in the 3 or 4 disk, I don't remember because it has been a long time. PLEASE DON'T INSTALL THE KERNEL VERSION 2.6 because it seems to be incompatible with wireless drivers. So install the 2.4.xx kernel source file and everything will be fine after that.

I had this problem earlier too and that is why when I installed Mandrake 10.0 I installed it in with the kernel version as 2.4 to stop further discrepencies.

Best of Luck,
Dino.