Wireless Network cardForum: Networking Topic: Wireless Network card started by: mustard Posted by mustard on Jan. 29 2008,12:28
I have tried using ndiswrapper to get a standard wireless network card to run. when I enter the location of the driver ....../wn6201.inf I just get a failed notice. None of the lights shine on the modem, nothing. I need a clear step by step instruction to help me, but cannot find one anywhere.Any thoughts Posted by lucky13 on Jan. 29 2008,18:05
Heh, is there a such thing as standard wireless card? Check the wifi cards page on the wiki. Check the ndiswrapper site and see if your card is compatible. You didn't say which card or version, or which chip it uses (usually says when you do lspci).
Presuming you copied the inf and sys files from your CD or from the zip you found on your card vendor's site and that your device node is wlan0 and you use dhcp... 1. Got root? sudo su 2. Make sure you don't have anything loaded for ndiswrapper: ndiswrapper -l That will show if you have any drivers loaded and list hardware if there is a driver loaded. 3. Load your inf: ndiswrapper -i /path/to/your.inf 4. Repeat 2 to see that it loaded. 5. If it did: modprobe ndiswrapper 6. Config wifi: iwconfig wlan0 essid whatever 7. Check iwconfig to make sure the settings are correct. Change if needed. 8. Start dhcp: pump -i wlan0 You can automate a lot of this by using the ndiswrapper tool in the setup menu and setting up scripts (myndis) so you don't have to go through the process every time. Not all cards are equally supported via ndiswrapper so you may have a lot of success (hopefully) or limited success. If you use WEP or WPA, you'll need to set your keys up as well. Posted by vendion on Jan. 29 2008,18:52
I have a BCM 94311 card that uses the bcmwl5.inf driver, the closest thing on the wiki is "Broadcom 4318: Works with ndiswrapper and bcmwl5.inf driver." The thing is NDISwrapper was unable to load the driver for my card when using the GUI tool provided. Running it via command line this is what I did:#ndiswrapper -i /home/dsl/bcmwl5.inf Installing bcml5: Forcing Parameter IBSSGMode 10 to IBSSGMode 12 (repeats 6 times) #ndiswrapper -l Installed Drivers: bcml5 driver installled, hardware present #modprobe ndiswrapper I tried to scan for the essid of the wireless network to connect to and it keep giving me an error so I eventaully ran iwconfig and this is what it had to say #iwconfig lo No wireless extensions present eth0 No wireless extensions present wlcardconfig had this to say "No wireless network card found" Anyone have a clue? Posted by lucky13 on Jan. 29 2008,19:50
Plenty of them -- kernel 2.4 only has so many WE patches available. My Broadcom-based card gives warnings related to that because the kernel is presently patched through WE16 (max in 2.4 is 18). As a result of the limitations with WE/2.4, you likely won't have full use of your drivers even if they successfully load. Scanning is one of the things that's limited in function -- doesn't work at all with my card. (All of this is why DSL is undergoing some significant changes so "new" hardware is better supported going forward.) What happens when you run "iwconfig wlan0" after modprobe ndiswrapper? Posted by vendion on Jan. 29 2008,20:49
Ok here are my results:#iwconfig wlan0 wlan0 No such device #iwconfig wlan1 wlan1 No such device #ndiswrapper -l Installed drivers: bcmwl5 driver installed, hardware present I have upgraded DSL to 4.2.5 and I can try with that... Posted by vendion on Jan. 30 2008,04:23
Same thing with 4.2.5... so its not ndiswrapper that came with older versions
Posted by joel_k on Jan. 30 2008,07:18
Sorry if I am jumping the thread, but I had almost exactly the same response from the wireless card I was trying to set up. The card was an INPROCOMM 2220. Ndiswrapper -l showed driver present hardware present, but iwconfig showed only lo after modprobing ndiswrapper. No errors were produced in dmesg, but no wlan0 was produced either. I succeeded in getting the card up in slax, so I know the driver I am using is good. I would like to use DSL as the notebook I am trying to run is very old and tired. I had intended to follow the advice on the ndiswrapper web page and compile the newest ndiswrapper, but if I am understanding correctly this may not work -- WE patches in 2.4 -- I'm not quite getting that part. Assuming I am not wasting my time trying to get this working with the 2.4 kernel would the procedure to build the module run something like:tar linux-2.4.31 link path/linux-2.4.31 /usr/src/linux cp dsl.config .config make oldconfig follow build instruction on ndiswrapper website tar up ndiswrapper module and other bits to a .dsl file plunk the .dsl file in mydsl directory and install with the provided tool. I've built kernels and installed modules, but have not had any experience with DSL or wireless, so any help would be appreciated. Posted by mustard on Jan. 30 2008,09:10
Thanks for your help and comments, when I have some time I will start again, follow your advise, and see how it goes. I know that it took a while to get things to work on the Ubuntu partition, so it is probably mostly a case of getting used to DSL setup.
Posted by mustard on Jan. 30 2008,16:11
I have managed to get ndiswrapper, with my wireless driver, loaded using modprobe. As yet though there are no lights burning on the modem card.
Posted by lucky13 on Jan. 30 2008,16:59
The version of ndiswrapper in DSL hasn't undergone updates. It's one of the roadblocks with 2.4 development in DSL. This will change in the very near future. Posted by lucky13 on Jan. 30 2008,17:01
Again, that could be one of the aspects related to incomplete driver support due to WE16 and ndiswrapper. Were you able to broadcast dhcp whether the light works? If not, hold tight and hopefully the next version of DSL will better suit your hardware. Posted by vendion on Jan. 30 2008,20:20
After reading the announcement about 4.2.4 and seeing this
Posted by lucky13 on Jan. 30 2008,23:44
It was broken in 4.2.3, and the same version of ndiswrapper has been in use (iirc). Posted by vendion on Jan. 31 2008,02:47
I thought it would be worth a try
Posted by adssse on Mar. 02 2008,03:48
I have run into the same problem as others in this thread (ndis drivers & hardware present, but no wlan0) with my Broadcom 94306 using 4.2.5. I was wondering if there are any expected changes for this in the next release or what I may be able to try in the meantime. Thanks in advance.
Posted by Juanito on Mar. 02 2008,07:06
I'm using the following broadcom wireless device with dsl-4.2.5 and ndiswrapper without problems:
Posted by adssse on Mar. 03 2008,01:15
It ended up being my own stupid mistake. I have a folder with the needed files and I believe I have been using bcmwl5.inf instead of bcmwl5a.inf. I just noticed this after reading your post Juanito. Thanks for bringing this to my attention and sorry for the disruption.
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