On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Zak wrote:
Thanks everyone for all the info. I seem to have this unquenchable
desire to master Linux so the random questions continue.
Sounds like you've come to the right place then! :)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ndiswrapper-1.8]$ ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
and get this:
bash: ndiswrapper: command not found
This probably means ndiswrapper isn't installed. Try:
yum install ndiswrapper
Anywho, I have the same problem if I try and run iwconfig. What am I
doing wrong?
Alternatively, it might mean that ndiswrapper and iwconfig are in /sbin/
or /usr/sbin/ and you're not root.[1]
I also tried running that yum command that tuxgirl gave me for the
kernel update thingy.
Here is what I got:
All that stuff is normal for yum and will appear every time you run the
command. The only useful information is after those several pages of
nonsense after "Parsing package install argument":
No Match for argument: kernel-module-ndiswrapper-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4
Nothing to do
That means that package that you're trying to install isn't in the
repositories in your list. In other words, (a) that package doesn't exist,
or (b) it does exist but yum doesn't know where to find it.
Pasting the package name into Google leads me to believe that the problem
is in fact (b). To add the "livna" repository[2], do this as root:
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release4.rpm
~ Ross
[1] Since you're of the curious nature, here's the scoop on what happens
behind-the-scenes when you type a command and the command-line prompt.
There's an environment variable called PATH (you can see what it is by
typing "echo $PATH" at the command line) that is basically a list of a
bunch of directories. If you type "ndiswrapper", it looks in the first
directory in your PATH for a program called "ndiswrapper", then in the
second directory, etc. If it makes it through all of them and still can't
find the program, it gives you that "command not found" error message.
Most programs that "normal" people run are found in /usr/bin/ or
/usr/local/bin. There are other directories for programs that the
super-user (root) typically runs: /sbin, /usr/sbin and /usr/local/sbin.
When you type "su" to become root, if you simply type "su", then you keep
the path of "zak", the normal user. But if you type "su -" then you get
root's path, along with all the sbin directories. (You can verify this by
typing "echo $PATH" after su-ing.)
The $PATH variable is just a nicety, however. All the programs in /sbin/
and /usr/sbin/ (and anywhere else for that matter) can be executed by
anyone, even if they're not in that user's path, by specifying the entire
path (e.g. "/sbin/lspci").
[2] Linux has one major problem--it moves too fast. A year from now, all
the basic libraries on your system will have newer versions with newer
features and possibly even changed APIs. What this basically means is that
somebody has to make sure that all the programs you're using (everything
from ndiswrapper to Konqueror to Firefox) are the correct version for
whatever libraries you have.
The people who write ndiswrapper and Konqueror and Firefox don't want to
have to create packages every couple of months for every single version of
Linux that comes out. So instead, they release the source code, and
somebody out there creates packages for all the programs they like to use,
for the particular flavor of Linux that they like to use. They put all
these packages into a "repository" that people like you can me can connect
to in order to download programs that we need.
(Some places that don't want to release their source code can't do this,
for example the Opera web browser--if you look at their Linux download
page: http://opera.com/download/linux/
they have around 50 different packages of Opera to download.)
"yum" is a tool to connect to these repositories and download the programs
automatically. If you look in /etc/yum.repos.d/ you can find a list of all
the repositories that yum is currently configured to use. Running the rpm
command I listed above will add "livna.repo" to that list, giving you
access to all the packages in the livna repository
(http://rpm.livna.org/).
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