Linux troubles

[JoeImp]

PLEASE take the time and read this, this has gotten me so annoyed.

I installed Fedora Core 4 for 64bit processors on my computer today. It's dual booting with Windows XP, all that works fine. I have a wireless PCI adapter, a NetGear WG311v2 54Mbps PCI, which I'm having major problems installing.

First of all, by doing a ./file_name in the terminal, is that the same as running it? Because I'll just type the name of the executable in the console, and it will say 'File Not Found', but if I put a './' in front of it, it will find it and execute it fine.

Now, I'm trying to install this wireless adapter. I'm following this detailed guide: http://www.houseofcraig.net/acx100_howto.php . That guide should work for my exact card.

At one point of the guide, he says to type 'iwconfig' and run it, to verify that everything is setup. I type it, and it says 'file not found'. But if I change my directory over to /sbin, I see a iwconfig in there, and can run it with ./iwconfig. During installation, I checked to install every single package, so I dont see how something doesnt work here.

Anyways, theres a program that came with the drivers, called 'start_net'. I run it, and it comes up with a load of errors such as:

which: no iwconfig in (/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/x11R6/bin:/home/Joe/bin)

It says that with iwconfig, ifconfig, and a number of other programs that were supposed to come in a package. But I know I have that package, because if I look in /sbin, I see everything that it says is missing. So I decided to make a copy of all those files in /home/Joe/bin. Now when I run it, it doesnt give me any missing file errors, it gives me two compile errors and bails out.

I really don't know what half of all this means. I'm sure I have the card installed, and the driver installed. If I go to the Hardware Browser, under Network Adapters or whatever it has two entries. One is my pci ethernet card, and one is my wireless card.

It says: Texas Instruments ACX 111 54Mbps Wireless Interface
Driver: Acx_pci
Device: /dev/eth1

All the directions for installing the drivers and everything went fine, I'm sure I'm fine there. But why cant I run iwconfig without going to /sbin and doing a ./iwconfig? What is this 'kerberos' that is in all those path names above?

This is my first time using linux. I've learned a CRAP load messing with this already, but I really have no clue what to do next. I should probably copy all those missing files to all those paths it gives, and try and run start_net then :P

Someone .... please help me :(

[EDIT - UPDATE]

For some reason, iwconfig works fine now. I log in as root, type 'iwconfig', and it works. I have no idea what it didnt work before. Weird

Ok, here's what I get when I run start_net with files I put in /home/Joe/bin:

[wrigley]

about the ./ "problem":
when you add ./ in front of an executable or script it will search for it in the current directory only. if you do not specify a path eg: ./ or ../somedir/ or /usr/somedir/ it will search for the executable in the path variable.

type "echo $PATH" to see what your path variable is, when you type executable_name it will search all the folders in that variable for the executable file you wish to run, if the file is not in any of those directories, it will not search the current directory, it will simply fail.

about the /sbin problem:
sbin is short for (as far as I know) 'secure binaries', therefore this directory is not in your $PATH unless you login as 'root', the superuser.

type "su root" on the command line to substitute your current user with 'root', beware though root has the ultimate power, power to create and power to destroy.

the line:
which: no iwconfig in (/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/x11R6/bin:/home/Joe/bin)
is telling you that the program 'which' can find no 'iwconfig' in $PATH
typing 'echo which: no iwconfig in("$PATH")' without single quotes would produce the same output.

As you seem to have discovered setting up linux, can be a real pain in the ***, all the solutions are usually easy to perform, but discovering what to do when something needs be done is the difficult one.

the first lines between the code tags simply state that there is no such file lsmod, try doing a search for the file:

find / -name lsmod

'find' is the name of the executable that finds, '/' is the directory to start the search in, '-name' tells 'find' that the word that follows it is the filename of the file to find.

[JoeImp]

I've still been working on it. I went back to what I was trying first, with a different firmware, but same driver. I can actually connect to my router, and get an IP address now. I can ping any website. If I boot up firefox and try to go to that website, my entire computer freezes. Just have to fix that, and I should be good to go.

I've learned so much from all of this, first time Im happy I ran into some problems.