madwifi during install?

[Henk Koster]

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:35:13 -0500, Matt Morgan wrote:

> On 11/16/05, Henk Koster <H.A.J.Koster at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:38:13 -0500, Matt Morgan wrote:
>>
>> > I have a laptop I want to install Ubuntu Breezy on. It has a "LAN
>> > Express AS" card, which is apparently an Atheros chip supported by
>> > madwifi. The machine also has built-in wired ethernet. FYI, the wifi
>> > adapter connects to my AP under windows, and I'm not using WEP or WPA.
>> >
>> > The Breezy Badger install isn't working, and I can't tell exactly why.
>> > Basically, it's failing on DHCP without
>> >
>> > a) telling me which network card it's using
>> > b) giving me an opportunity to tell it to use the wifi card, and
>> > madwifi drivers (and manually install a driver, if that's necessary).
>> >
>> > How do I get this to work? How do I get more control over the install?
>> > I tried "manually configure the network card," the option that comes
>> > up when DHCP fails, but that only allows me to enter an IP address,
>> > which is clearly not the problem. I think the install is just trying
>> > to use the wired ethernet adapter, which isn't plugged in.
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Matt
>>
>> The driver you need is in the "linux-restricted-modules-2.6.12-9-386"
>> package, available on the Breezy install CD. This package is not installed
>> by default.
> 
> Thanks. Can you point me somewhere that explains how I tell the Ubuntu
> install that I need a special driver?

As far as I know, you can install Breezy without a network connection, at
least the initial install. Once you're that far, then you can use Synaptic
to install the missing package -- just mount the install CD with 
"sudo mount /media/cdrom", possibly edit the /etc/apt/sources.list to point 
to this CD (it's the default, if I remember correctly), then install the
package with Synaptic (or in a terminal type "sudo apt-get install
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.12-9-386". Don't forget to add the
following lines to /etc/network/interfaces:

iface ath0 inet dhcp

You can now insert the wifi card, type "sudo ifup ath0" and you should
have a connection. Personally, I prefer to let the "network-manager"
package (in one of the additional repositories) handle my network
connections (you don't need any "auto" or "hotplug" lines for this
interface in this case).
   
-- 
H.A.J. Koster
"Behavioral axioms are right, but agents make mistakes..."
(attributed to L.J. Savage)