trying to find drivers

[cavemanpi]

I am trying to get a linksys wusb11v3.0 usb wireless adapter to work properly with my linux box. i am using mandriva and i believe the version is 10.2. Thus far my search has gone with a little bit of frustration. I am also a complete noob to linux so that does not help matters either. any assistance would be appreciated.

[AlexK]

See this post, follow link for ndiswrapper.

[cavemanpi]

thank you for your input. However i had already investigated their db of supported devices and my little adapter does not appear to be on there. i did however pick up the windows drivers and i am theoretically supposed to be able to use those with ndiswrapper, correct? I am slightly hesitant experimenting with this network adapter and my machine because last time i played with it thinking i had what i needed, I confused the router and the network had to be re- set up. any more advice would be wonderful.

[AlexK]

in theory the drivers which came with your card should work with ndiswrapper, however since you have a usb based card, it sometimes can be a little difficult to get it working.

Before you start, get the kernel sources, wireless tools and ndiswrapper off the mandrake cd/dvd (goto MCC and add new software). Copy the windows drivers to your home directory. Now, execute the following commands as root in the terminal:

lsusb        <------ check to see if system detects the usb card
cd ~/drivers   <------- location of saved driver files
ndiswrapper -i name_of_driver.inf
ndiswrapper -l   <-------- check to see if installed
ndiswrapper -m
modprobe ndiswrapper   <----- insert it into kernel so that ndiswrapper will be available on reboot
iwconfig       <------------ should return many entries, one of which should be wlan0

Now again launch MCC, goto the networking section, select new wireless network, and enter ndiswrapper as the driver, then configure the network as normal e.g. IP, DHCP, SSID, WEP key etc...

[cavemanpi]

I have experienced a couple of issues. When i tried to use the modprobe command i recieved the following error message.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper
(/lib/modules/2.6.11-6mdk/misc/ndiswrapper.ko): Invalid module format
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

and also when i went into mcc and selected that i wanted to use ndiswrapper and the driver that i had, i recieved this error

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
An unexpected error has happened:insmod'ing module
ndiswrapper failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/modules.pm line 66.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

To this i say grrrr.

[AlexK]

The only time I have experienced such an error is when I accidently had 2 instances of ndiswrapper program installed, goto the MCC add remove program section, and remove any multiple instance of ndiswrapper.

Also, you have the kernel sources installed?

[cavemanpi]

yessir i do have them installed. I believe that it is a distinct possibility that i have 2 instances going. i'll go take a look at that and see what is going on there.

[cavemanpi]

yes there were two instances installed, I removed the outdated version. My problem with the error messages,however, persists. have you any other ideas as to why i would be getting the fatal error message with the modprobe command?

[AlexK]

the way i got around it was to remove both of them and then start fresh i.e. without any ndiswrapper installed.

[cavemanpi]

Thanks alot for all the help you have given me. I have concluded however that this usb adapter is just not going to work with my computer at the present time. I have encountered a distressing issue altogether sepparate from this one. I configured some video options and it told me to log out then log back in for them to take effect. when it logged out, it decided to go into command line form. since i do not have a great knowledge of using linux, this presents a bit of a problem. startx does not start the graphical interface for some reason. fatal errors occur. it goes to command line on startup requesting a username and password.