How to use modprobe?? Please Help!!

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#1

Hi, I’m a new user (SUSE 11.0). I really want to break with MS Windows but so far having some trouble - help will be greatly appreciated.

To install the madwifi driver needed for my Atheros 802.11 card the instructions located at:
Atheros madwifi - openSUSE
tell me I need to perform

“modprobe ath_pci”

I assume it’s telling me to type this in a terminal command line, but when I do that the reply is:

“bash: modprobe: command not found”

I’ve checked in YaST and I already have the package “module-init-tools” installed, which says it contains the “modprobe” command. If it means anything to you I find another command from the package ie “lsmod” works, but none of the few others I try do.

Please help me to get “modprobe” working properly.

#2

you also have to be root to type that command in. So type

su

followed by your root password first.

then it can modprobe for you

#3

Thanks a lot for answering me gregosmith . . . I think it worked, but now there’s a new error message which may be related to more “modprobe” problems, or may be related to some error I’ve made in previous steps . . .

So now I type “su <username> modprobe ath_pci” then it asks me for my password. Then the next line displayed is:

“bash: modprobe: No such file or directory”

Is that related to “modprobe” again or the “ath_pci”?

#4

su

and then hit enter, and then put in the password. That logs you in as super user (root). Or you can do:

sudo modprobe ath_pci

that will also prompt for the password, but it just runs the one command as super user, as opposed to logging you as super user.

#5

Well that definitely did something (the letters turned red . . . ooooo!); thanks for your help. Unfortunately I must have something previous wrong because it says:

Module ath_pci not found.

There are many files called ath_pci in one of the subdirectories I’m doing this from (I tried switching to the directory containing them and still no good) - could you possibly tell me what file extensions modprobe should work on?

After that I’ll search through the wiki/forums for more specific info before I bother anyone further.

Thanks again!