Should I do kernel upgrade?

[biniman]

Hi all,
I have debian.4.0.r6.i386, kernel 2.6.18 in my system. I have been unable to use my Belkin wireless adapter since I installed Debian. The windows partion works perfectly with the wireless card. Just a few hours ago, I bought the D-link DGE660TD Gigabit cardbus notebook adapter. It worked right out of the box on both the Windows and Debian partitions without requiring any configuration from me. I am quite sure now that the Belkin card is incompatible with Debian version version that I have installed. So, I am thinking of upgrading the kernel to 2.6.28 in the hope that it would have the appropriate drivers for the Belkin card.

My questions are:
1. Can debian.4.0.r6.i386 accommodate upgrade from kernel 2.6.18 to 2.6.28?

2. Are there any other issues that I need to consider?

Thanks,

biniman

[MikeTbob]

Debian can upgrade to any version of Linux kernel, you might try downloading the correct firmware and drivers for the WIFI card first. The chipset may not be represented in the kernel. So you really need to know which chipset it uses first.
Post the output of

lspci

[biniman]

pioneer:/home/jonathan# lspci -nn
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: ATI Technologies Inc RS200/RS200M AGP Bridge [IGP 34 0M] [1002:cbb2] (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: ATI Technologies Inc PCI Bridge [IGP 340M] [1002:7010 ]
00:02.0 USB Controller [0c03]: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller [10b9:5237] (r ev 03)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Co ntroller Audio Device [10b9:5451] (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge [0601]: ALi Corporation M1533/M1535 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdi n IV/V/V+] [10b9:1533]
00:08.0 Modem [0703]: ALi Corporation M5457 AC'97 Modem Controller [10b9:5457]
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ601/6912/711E0 CardBus/SmartCard Bus Controller [1217:6972]
00:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) [104c:8026]
00:0f.0 USB Controller [0c03]: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller [10b9:5237] (r ev 03)
00:10.0 IDE interface [0101]: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE [10b9:5229] (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge [0680]: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU] [ 10b9:7101]
00:12.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 ( MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller [100b:0020]
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon IGP 330M/3 40M/350M [1002:4337]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Belkin Unknown device [1799:701f] (rev 20)
pioneer:/home/jonathan#

[MikeTbob]

Here is a very good howto, I think you may need NDISwrapper, but try this first.
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/wir...tart-here.html

[biniman]

Okay, I have donloaded the ndswrapper-1.53. But I am not able to install it. See below:

pioneer:/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53# make uninstall
NOTE: Not all installed files are removed, as different distributions install ndiswrapper files at different places.
Run uninstall as many times as necessary until no "removing" messages appear below.
pioneer:/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53# make uninstall
NOTE: Not all installed files are removed, as different distributions install ndiswrapper files at different places.
Run uninstall as many times as necessary until no "removing" messages appear below.
pioneer:/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53# make uninstall
NOTE: Not all installed files are removed, as different distributions install ndiswrapper files at different places.
Run uninstall as many times as necessary until no "removing" messages appear below.
pioneer:/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53# make
make -C driver
make[1]: Entering directory `/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53/driver'
Makefile:34: *** Cannot find kernel version in /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-686/build, is it configured?. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53/driver'
make: *** [all] Error 2

************************************************** ************************************************** ***
The instruction on the ndswrapper says the following command should show "include" or ".config" file. But it did not. See below:

pioneer:/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53# ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
ls: /lib/modules/2.6.18-6-686/build: No such file or directory

************************************************** ************************************************** ****
Then I decided to list the contents of the kernel module as shown below:

pioneer:/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53# ls -la /lib/modules/`uname -r`/
total 1392
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2008-12-25 01:06 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2008-12-25 01:06 ..
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 2008-12-25 01:06 kernel
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 298996 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.alias
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 69 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.ccwmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 333142 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.dep
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 813 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.ieee1394map
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 730 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.inputmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21839 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.isapnpmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 74 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.ofmap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 236699 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.pcimap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1135 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.seriomap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 136641 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.symbols
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 334134 2008-12-25 01:06 modules.usbmap
pioneer:/belkin-driver/ndiswrapper-1.53#

************************************************** ************************************************
I know this is getting way out of proportion. But please, see what you can infer from it.

biniman

[MikeTbob]

Well I am not that famliar with Debian, but I think you need to install build-essential or maybe kernel-headers. Hopefully someone else can chime in here and tell you what exactly you need.