FC5(1) vs Network-Manager(0)

[Gene Heskett <gene heskett verizon net>]

Greetings;

I have a laptop, an HP dv5120us, with a broadcom 4318 radio in it.  It has 
the 32 bit version of FC5 installed on it.

I have ndiswrapper around the extracted winderz driver, and I did have 
this radio working, both here and in a motel in upstate MI at one point 
several months ago, like in the spring of 2006.  but never with 
network-manager as all it would do then is tear down a working 
connection.

But it was much easier to just disable the radio and use the motels little 
dlink supplied box plugged into the ethernet port, and configure the 
ifcfg-eth0 accordingly.  But I cannot seem to re-enable connectivity even 
if I modprobe ndiswrapper, which after enabling it in windows, now turns 
on the radio led in the lid hinge.  I may not have the correct options in 
my modprobe.conf file now, as it doesn't load ndiswrapper except by hand 
anymore.

Please take me step by step, or point me at a setup tutorial, that will 
bring this back to life.

I also have FC6 installed on this machine, and it only has one card, a 
wired eth0 on the mobo.

Network-Manager has never been enabled here as I've aways relied on 
editing the ifcfg-eth0 file to enable it which worked nicely.

However, enabling it and starting it apparently does not do the job here 
either as there is no messages directly related to it in the messages 
log, nor in dmesg, and nm-tool returns:

[root coyote share]# nm-tool

NetworkManager Tool

State: disconnected

print_devices(): didn't get a reply from NetworkManager.
There are no available network devices.

even though eth0 is up and running and my network connectivity is working 
well.  There is a message in the log about the openVPN extension which 
I've not yet configured as I just installed it, looks like this:

Jan 10 12:23:16 coyote NetworkManager: <information>    starting...
Jan 10 12:23:16 coyote NetworkManager: <information>    Adding VPN 
service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.openvpn' with name 'openvpn' and 
program '/usr/bin/nm-openvpn-service'

What should I do next here on this box?  I intend to add an etheros based 
wireless card at some point.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
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Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.