Intel pro/wireless 2100 3B PCI Card under Fedora Core1

After spending a few days making the new machine work under Fedora core 1. I figured that it may help myself later if I write down some details in this process. The main thing is 802.11 wireless network. I feel that a laptop with a LAN cable is just a poor dog chained to the wall. So the first thing I tried on after installing Fedora was the wireless card driver.

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To make the Intel pro/wireless 2100 3B PCI card work under Fedora core1
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1. Download the windows-xp dirver for this Intel pro wireless 2100 3B PCI card from linuxant website:

2. Run unzip against this .zip file. The .INF and .SYS files are needed by the driverloader wrapper.

3. Check linux version by using the commands:
uname -r
uname -a

4. Choose the right driverloader to download. In this case, choose for i686:

driverloader-1.66_k2.4.22_1.2115.nptl-1fdr.i686.rpm.zip

5. Run unzip on this .zip file and obtain the .rmp file.

6. Install this rpm package as instructed by linuxant website.

7. Point web browser to driverLoader's web configurator at

http://127.0.0.1:18020/

and login as "root" to complete the installation. It will be necessary to supply driverLoader a copy of the .INF and .SYS files from the vendor's driver (available on the CDROM which came with the product or from their website) and a valid license key, available from http://www.linuxant.com/store/.

8. Login Fedora as root and run:

redhat-config-network

It can be noticed in the "Hardware" page that the wireless card has already been installed properly. However in the "Devices" page there is only the original LAN NIC. Click "New" to add the wireless card to this page. The GUI is straightforward and even support encryption although the module wpa_supplicant-lnxt2003121400 has not been installed yet (*). Choose the proper channel number (in my MMHome WLAN, channel 6), the network ID (MMHome) and encription key (0x, 64-bit encription is used on the Apple AirPort station), choose "auto" in the mode selection box.

9. After adding the wireless card into the "Device" page, it shows up as eth1 while the original LAN NIC is eth0. Select the wireless card and click "Activate". After a few seconds the wireless link should be established. No need to restart service or reboot Fedora. However, every time Fedora is rebooted, the activation step is still needed. Just su to root and run

redhat-config-network

select the wireless card (eth1) and click "Activate". The wireless link will be established in a few seconds and it is OK to close the config window.


NOTE:
(*) The wpa_supplicant-lnxt2003121400 module supplied by linuxant does not compile on my Fedora core1 box (IBM T41). Fortunately redhat-config-network is capable of handling encription all by itself. After I entered the right network ID and key, the link works. Since linuxant specifically provides driverloader for Fedora, I am not sure if they still need to require wpa_supplicant-lnxt2003121400 for encription.