[NCLUG] Fedora 6 and the RaLink rt2500 wireless card

[David Braley]

Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> That's different. Even in Debian on a kernel upgrade all the drivers
> must be recompiled against the new kernel. This is why it's so nice to
> have a driver thats in the mainstream kernel... it's automagically
> updated when the kernel is and breakage is noticed right away. 
>
> Things like this ra2500 driver aren't in the main kernel, so when the
> kernel is updated, you must manually recompile the driver against the
> new kernel. 
>   

If I am left to rebuilding the wireless driver each time the kernel is
updated, do I need to un-install the old one before rebuilding a new
one, or can I just re-compile from the same source again. Will the new
driver overwrite the old one? I think it is the makefile (I am not sure
exactly which file it is) in the source for the wireless card that seems
to be smart enough to know whether you are using the 2.4.x or 2.6.x
kernel, but it does not seem to care which exact kernel you are running
(like 2.6.16 or 2.6.18). Can I assume a "make, make install" would do
it? It would be nice if it left my config files
(like /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ra0) alone as well; I had to
manually create them myself, so I am guessing they would remain untouched.

This might be an excellent opportunity for me to learn a little more
about scripting in bash. I bet I could write a little program that would
re-compile and install my wireless driver when needed.

Ya, I will write a little program..... I'm going to have this machine
all fucked up now!  ;-)


David