ndiswrapper

Forum: Networking
Topic: ndiswrapper
started by: kyleneitzel

Posted by kyleneitzel on Nov. 29 2006,21:51

I'm using ndiswrapper with my Linksys WPC54G wifi card. Works great, in fact, DSL is the only distro I can get the damn thing to work on. I'm wondering if there is a way to save the ndiswrapper settings so I don't need to go to the setup window and enter the path to the driver every time. It would be nice to have something equivalent to a Windows .bat file where I could quickly execute the command when I want to enable my wifi. Note: I switch out my wifi card with a wired NIC frequently- wired at work, wifi at home.
I'm open to any ideas. Thanks much.

Posted by roberts on Nov. 29 2006,22:20

If you use the ndiswrapper GUI then look in /opt
The GUI program creates a script /opt/myndis.sh
You can use that script to enable your wireless.
Just make sure the drive is mounted that has the windows driver.
Run the script as root.

sudo /opt/myndis.sh

In fact, I usually use the icontool to make a desktop icon to start my wireless on-demand.

Posted by kyleneitzel on Nov. 29 2006,22:42

Awesome. I saw that file at one point and wondered where it came into play. I'm sure that will work.
Follow up issue:
Since I installed the myDSL extension to switch GTK themes, my icons are gone. They are enabled in the icon tool. They briefly appear if I do something like change (or remove) the wallpaper image. Any idea how to get them back?

Posted by roberts on Nov. 30 2006,17:12

Don't know about which extension you may have loaded, but for your icons...

Likely situation is that you have a .lnk file pointing to a non-exsistant icon. Look in /home/dsl/.xtdesktop There you will find .lnk and icon type files .gif .png etc You can have extra icon files, but all .lnk files must point to a valid icon file. You could copy over the original set of icons from /etc/skel/.xtdesktop but that would not cover any extra items you may have created or deleted. One quick way to check for a missing icon would be to type the following

grep Icon .xtdesktop/*.lnk | cut -f3 -d":" | xargs ls | grep "No"

Posted by josh_eeg on Dec. 07 2006,06:21

Hi, I am glad someone knows how to use NdisWrapper I have a compaq presario v5000 laptop and the bcmwl5.sys and inf files I try to stick the inf file in the GUI and it doen't work... what are the other boxes for? Also more documentation in dsl for that would be helpfull maby when you start the program. My window$ machine auto connects to the wireless lan so theirs no passwords.

Posted by kyleneitzel on Dec. 07 2006,16:05

Josh-

I'm no expert with ndiswrapper but I might be able to shed a little light. If your Windows machine automatically connects and you never gave it any sort of password previously then there is probably no encryption. The other fields in the GUI are device (your NIC), SSID and WEP key. The device will most likely be "wlan0". That was automatically populated on my machine. SSID is the name of the network you connect to. (Examples: linksys, JoshWifi, netgear- whatever the admin named it.) If you don't know what it is you may need to go into Windoze and open the wifi utility to check. The WEP key is only needed if WEP encryption is set up on the router. I don't use WEP at home so I'm not sure if this field should be populated with the ASCII or HEX key. (Anyone know for sure?) If you don't have WEP on your router just leave that field blank.

I also have an .inf and a .sys file. I put both in a folder together- not sure if the .sys is needed so I put it in there just in case. My drivers are located in a folder in my home dir:
/home/dsl/wifi/lsbcmnds.inf

Is your card internal or PCI? Do you know what chipset it uses? Have you tried to get it working without ndiswrapper?

Good luck!

Posted by josh_eeg on Dec. 07 2006,17:16

internal wifi card