lub997
Group: Members
Posts: 26
Joined: July 2005 |
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Posted: July 29 2005,19:27 |
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Well, I finally got it working, but I had to use ndiswrapper to do it. I really wanted to use the ath_pci.o module as opposed to using ndiswrapper, as I really don't like the idea of using non-Linux drivers on my laptop, and especially don't like the idea of using a Windows driver. However, I have to admit, it works, it works well, and it is extremely fast, and I'm using my wireless card to type this right now from the opposite side of the house that my router is in, and so clearly ndiswrapper works with this card. In case anybody else runs across the same problem I had with this cards compatability wth DSL, I'll tell how I got it to work on my laptop. I will stress again that I had completely no success with the madwifi driver even though the module was already included with DSL and I unknowingly didn't even need to compile it. Still can't get that driver to compile, and still can't get the ath_pci.o included with DSL to work at all either. Still getting an insmod error when I try to load it. This is how I did get it to work. I gave up on the madwifi driver (but only for the time being) and messed around with ndiswrapper. I mounted my included software CD that I got with the wireless card, copied the directory structure off of it into my directory on DSL <<cp -r whatever is in /mnt/cdrom to /home/dsl/ (will be different for everyone)>>. Then I had all the driver files on my hard drive to play around with. Located the .inf file. For my card it is net5211.inf, and was under /home/dsl/dlink/Drivers/ directory that I had copied from /mnt/cdrom. I did not use ndiswrapper from the command line because I am new to wireless and networking in general and although <<ndiswrapper --help>> only showed about 3 command line options, I had no clue what they meant. So, instead, I used the ndiswrapper GUI available under System>Net Setup>ndiswrapper on the menu you get when you right click on the background in DSL. There are only 3 things it asks you for this way, and I had pretty much no clue what any of them meant, so I opened up the manual that came with my router and figured it out. It asks you on the first line for the location of the .inf file for your windows driver. For mine it was of course the net5211.inf, and I used the full path with it, not just the filename. Then it asks you for SID, and this is where I got lost because I had never heard of an SID before. So, I googled and became even more confused, and then went and looked at my uncle's Windows XP machine that was already using my wireless router via a USB wireless contraptions of some type, and poked and prodded the connection settings under the Network Places folder or whatever Windows calls it, and found that though his connection settings to my router said nothing about and SID, they did show and ESSID, which sounded kind of similar, so I took that ESSID and typed it in on my laptop running DSL under SID, and then there was a 3rd thing it asked for under SID, and that was WEP, and again, I had no clue what it meant, and never with any amount of googling did I become clear on what that exactly is, so I just left it blank, and clicked ok. Then I went to the command line as root and typed <<ndiswrapper -l>> and it showed that ndiswrapper had in fact installed my net5211.inf driver, and that the hardware for the driver was indeed present in my PCMCIA port. At that point, I typed <<wlanconfig>> and it showed a connection called "wlan0" which I was quite skeptical would actually work, since I had tried it a few times before not knowing what I was doing, and it hadn't worked before. However, now that I had set it up with a SID, <<wlanconfig>> showed something new for wlan0 that it hadn't shown before called an access point (this had previously been blank), so I figured I'd give it a try in Firefox, and now it works, and I'm typing this onto this forum using my wireless card. For a lot of people I'm sure this stuff is all obvious, but I was new to wireless and networking at all really, so if anybody else has this problem in the future with DSL and this card that doesn't know what they are doing when it comes to wireless, maybe this will help. I'd still like to figure out the madwifi driver though, even though this driver works fine and quite fast, because I really do hate the idea of using a Windows driver on Linux. The thought of it just screams things like "instability," "blue screen of death," and my personal favorite "illegal operation;" phrases I never hope to see on linux.
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