Andreal-
I find that a bit confusing. I think they're making a distinction between linux and freeBSD, which handle ifconfig differently.
First, I would try to configure wlan0 using the GUI tool under the Applications->System Settings pulldown menu in Gnome. Change the parameters and stop/start or restart the interface.
See about eight or ten paragraphs down for testing the interface. If your routing table is fine, you may be able to just start a web browser and see if you can browse.
If the GUI tool doesn't do it, here's what I would try:
See http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Fedora
Just over half-way down that page is a section that starts:
Then created /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 and added
It lists a bunch of parameters...look at them and decide what they should be for your network.
Before you alter your boot scripts to do this (as described at the URL above), try:
/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 <parameters> to set them.
That way, you can try different settings without rebooting every time.
To decide what parameters should be, open a terminal and execute:
man ifconfig
at a command prompt. You will get a unix man page, which you can scroll down in by pressing return (for one line) or by pressing the spacebar (for a page) and up in by pressing 'u' (for a page) and back up to the top in by pressin 'p'. Pressing 'q' will return you to the command line. Just about every command on your machine will have some help information available using either 'man' or 'info'.
Your command will look something like:
/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.123.255 192.168.3.3
.......................................^.......... ................................^................. ...............^...............................
.......................................l.......... .................................l................ .................l................................
............................subnet mask................... all bits of host set............ip address of this interface
These values depend on the private address space within which your network runs and the settings of your wireless access point will influence your choices here. You have to get the broadcast and netmask addresses right, or it won't work. I used an O'Reilly book called Linux Network Administrators Guide when I first set mine up. I don't know how much networking expertise you have; if you're not sure, leave the settings on your wireless access point and whether you're subnetting your network here. I will check sometime tomorrow and help you choose the right netmask and broadcast. Hopefully you know all this stuff., but Windows makes it really simple (as I remember, it's been a while...). The example above is given from one of my machines. Also, I only use static IP addressing, and I imagine this might need to be different if you use DHCP (in which a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol server tells the interface what IP address to use).
Executing:
/sbin/ifconfig
with no parameters will show you the current settings and statistics for several interfaces. Just pay attention to wlan0. Output will look something like (for an ethernet port eth1 on my laptop):
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr <blah-blah>
inet addr:192.168.123.3 Bcast:192.168.123.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20d:60ff:fe2d:333c/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1327 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:566 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:617732 (603.2 KiB) TX bytes:70272 (68.6 KiB)
Base address:0x8400 Memory:c0220000-c0240000
To test the interface, you need the ip address of another host. Try:
ping -I wlan0 -c 12 google.com
That will send twelve ICMP packets to google which should answer back with twelve packets. If that doesn't work, use the address of another host on your lan if there is one. Microsoft machines by default don't answer ICMP echo requests, and you have to set some setting in the Control Panel to get them to do so. If it still doesn't work, there could be a routing issue. In that case, post back with the output of
netstat -r
so I can see your routing table.
Once you get it working, then you can edit the boot parameters (/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0) so that it will be correctly set on every boot.
I also want to be sure you are not always logging in as root. I have completely screwed two or three linux boxes as root. It's okay at this stage where you don't have a lot of valuable stuff on your newly installed machine, but later on, you are going to want to be logging in as your own user id and then using
su -
to switch to root and using
exit
to change back as soon as you're done making configuration changes. I also disable root logins entirely, both over the net and at the console, for security reasons. My network is constantly barraged with people across oceans trying to break in, and if root can log in, all they have to do is guess root's password.
You're doing really well for "the biggest newbi'... surely a lot better than I did!
-al