I am new to Linux, and I just rebuilt my kernel in order to attempt to get my wireless card to work. Now I am using kernel version 2.6.14.6, and I need the linux-headers-2.6.14.6 installed to continue using hostAP. Can anyone tell me where I can find them? I can't find them in synaptic or with apt-get. Another question...when I boot with this new kernel and try a `uname -r` command, bash tells me the command cannot be found. Why is that happening? Thanks for any help.

A few things come to mind. 1. You're running Breezy Badger... ndiswrapper is available by default. There's no reason to recompile your kernel anymore. Nor do you need the headers. However, now that you *did* recompile your kernel, the provided ndiswrapper will not work :/ If you're a newbie, and there isn't much on the install, I'd say reinstall the old kernel (I *think* you can do it via synaptic... but I don't know. If in doubt you can always reinstall ubuntu... it's pretty quick). 2. If you recompiled your kernel, you already have the full kernel source, which includes the headers, of course. So you don't need to download them. 3. I have no idea why uname is not found... I just checked on a machine I have sitting next to me running Kubuntu (the same under the hood) and it runs fine. Hope that helps!

Well the thing is, my card is a D-Link DWL-520 rev. E1. I tried using NDISWrapper, but it still is having issues (I assume when it tries to flash the firmware onto the card). I have read online in the Ubuntu wiki that that card requires HostAP to work, so that is why I am trying it that way. If I have the kernel headers, where would they be? I cannot find them in the directory in which I untarred the source. Thanks

From what I gathered (in an admittedly short web browse), HostAP is a native Linux driver for that card. It can do other stuff, but I think all you want to do is use it as a wireless driver. If that's true, then you need to compile the hostAP source after compiling your kernel. Correct me if I'm confused. I assume you untarred the kernel to /usr/src ? If not... that's the usual place to put it. Once it's set up and you boot into it, programs that need those headers usually find the right directory by running (surprise!) "uname -r". And if your system can't find uname... you see the problem. So... I'd say get the new kernel running, if you haven't already... then see what's up with uname. I can't think why it wouldn't be installed... perhaps you're running under some account that doens't have access to it? Try doing "sudo uname -r" (and entering your password) while running as the "main" user. If it still can't find uname... something bad happened. You might want to try reinstalling the "coreutils" package... perhaps your new kernel breaks compatibility with it (coreutils provides uname, among tons of other important things). Sorry for the rambling post... let me know what you think.

Thanks a lot for the help and ideas. I tried reinstalling coreutils, but still no luck with uname. The only reason that I built the new kernel was that I read that I need CONFIG_NET_RADIO enabled in order to use hostAP. Is there a way (using the old kernel, I believe it is 2.6.10) to recompile that kernel and turn on CONFIG_NET_RADIO, or is there another way to enable it? I just do not know how to recompile the old kernel, since it all came on the distribution disk, so I do not know where the source is.

Here's the thing... Ubuntu kernels are heavily modified and patched... so you can't just download the same kernel version off of www.kernel.org and get the same result. You can get the source for the kernel you used to have though... from synaptic I would guess. My guess however, is one of these two things. 1. CONFIG_NET_RADIO is needed for using HostAP as a wireless access point (which I doubt you're doing), and so you can ignore it. 2. CONFIG_NET_RADIO is a generic wireless option, and is thus almost guarenteed to be on by default in an Ubuntu kernel. If all you want to do is use the HostAP code as the driver for your card (Which I think is what you want) then all you need are the headers for your kernel, and the HostAP source code. I would recommend sticking with the regular Ubunutu kernel (Ubuntu is a bit finicky when you start messing with it's internals). You can get the corresponding headers for the default Ubuntu kernel from Synaptic. Choose one of the linux-headers-2.6.whatever packages. After you install those headers, you should be able to compile the HostAP driver. You'll also need wireless-tools (so you can actually *use* the wireless card), but first you need to compile the driver. Don't worry about any funky options... HostAP can be used for things much more complex than I think you want to do with it. You'll still need uname though... I have no idea why you don't have it. Did you try running sudo uname as the main user of your system?

Hey thanks a lot for your research and help. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to this, so I am going to give up on it for a little while and just keep the PC hardwired until I have the time to finally figure this out. Thanks a bunch, though, I appreciate it.