Installing wireless on fedora 7 IBM Thinkpad r60 machine

You just bought a new laptop, IBM Thinkpad R60. Since you are an open source fans, you have decided to install the latest stable version of fedora, the fedora 7. After finish installing operating system, you try to access your office's wireless internet connection. but to your surprise there is no wireless options can you find on the start up menu. Don't panic, because there is a way how to configure your new laptop so that it can access wireless internet connection.

1. Check your wireless adapter.
$ cat /etc/sysconfig/hwconf | grep -i wireless
or
$ kudzu -p | grep -i wireless

2. The outcome usually will be like this: desc: "Intel Corporation 3945ABG Network Connection"
If your outcome of the command is also similar to the above, then you are in the right place :-).

3. The driver of that wireless device is not pre-installed on Fedora 7. So you have to install the driver from additional repository. Access you machine as root, and create file /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
$ vim /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
Insert the following content in the atrpms.repo
[atrpms]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/fc$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
gpgcheck=1

Import also the atrpms signing key
rpm --import http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms

4. Install ipw3945 driver.
$ yum install ipw3945

5. You have to start the daemon in order for the driver to work. Add /sbin/ipw3945d to your /etc/rc.local
$ echo "/usr/sbin/ipw3945d" >> /etc/rc.local

6. Restart your machine.

7. You can also activate a service named NetworkManager to easily choose from GUI the wireless connection that you desire.
$ NetworkManager
$ chkconfig NetworkManager on - This command set NetworkManager to start on boot

8. You can scan for wireless network around you by using the below command
$ iwlist scan