My box:

2.0 ghz
512 mb ram
NVIDIA Geforce 2 GTS (32 mb)
Dual booted w/Windows XP and Redhat 9 (2.4.20-6 kernel)



My problem:

I have a Senao/Engenius (prism chipset, I think) wireless lan USB adapter that I use to connect to my access point which gives me internet access, but it seems that it is incompatible with linux. After quite a bit of digging, I learned that I would have to get the wlan-ng drivers to allow it to be used with linux, so I went to [ADDRESS USED TO BE HERE, BUT REMOVED DUE TO STUPID 5 POST RULE] to download pre-packaged RPMs. I chose this route mainly because I am rather new to linux and I thought RPMs would probably be alot easier than downloading and compiling the drivers from source.

Unfortunately for me, the RPMs are only available for kernel versions 2.4.20-20.9, 24.9, 27.9, 30.9, and 31.9. None of which I have and none of which are available for download on [ADDRESS USED TO BE HERE, BUT REMOVED DUE TO STUPID 5 POST RULE].

So then I went to the original site for the wlan-ng drivers ([ADDRESS USED TO BE HERE, BUT REMOVED DUE TO STUPID 5 POST RULE]) to download the sourcecode of the drivers since none of the RPMs would work. First of all, the site offers no information about which files I need to download (there are about 40 different compressed packages) so I tried to go ahead and download all of them. Suffice to say, half of them would not download properly (including the readme file). Even if I could download all of the files, I would have to burn them on to a disc and then switch back to linux and compile each package and see which one works by process of elimination. And that would truly be a pain.

So I'm not sure what I should do, but I know I'm tired of wasting more than half of my 80 gb harddrive on an OS that I rarely use, just because I don't have access to the internet.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.


PS: I want to strangle whoever made that 5 post universal resource locater rule. Thanks for making me retype this entire thing, dickhead.

i think we bove have/had the same problem.

what i did:

i downloaded the wlan_ng(usb) driver rpm's...

as you said, to install them you need a newer kernel version....
so i downloaded the newest kernel available from redhat.com
i downloaded the rpm-package so installing the new kernel wasn't difficult...

then istalled wlan_ng usb driver rpm's and now my wlan adapter is working.

Ok, so just download the newest kernel, despite the fact that the rpms are only available for the kernel versions listed above? (see original post)

I might as well give it a shot... thanks!

the newest kernel i could get in the mirror i selected was 31.9, and that was exactly the one i needed / you need.

Bah... I downloaded and installed it (2.4.20-31.9) along with the accompanying wlan-ng driver rpms and it still doesn't seem to be working.

I keep getting a bunch of weird junk at boot, and it just stays there, so I eventually have to cut the power and go back to windows. I would post what it says, but its really just alot of "mumbo-jumbo" followed by this:

"<0> Kernel panic: Aiee, killing interrupt handler
In interrupt handler - not syncing"


Ofcourse I can avoid this by unplugging the adapter, but that defeats the whole purpose of why I am doing all of this.

hmmmmmm,
i'm also a noob and dont no much about linux....i hope that there are a few linux gurus who can help you, but i think there is a problem with the driver rpm.
i also have problems when i use my adapter....everythink seems to work fine but after a few minutes there seems to be somethink like a memory lack....i think downloading the source and compiling would have been a better solution, but configuring the usb-adapter isnt easy....i'm also still looking for a good solution....

Despite the fact that I haven't found a solution, its nice to know I'm not in it alone...

Thanks for your time!