[RedFox5]

I have an old AST Ascentia M Series laptop currently running Damn Small Linux. I've been trying to get the WiFi adapter working, but have had no luck so far. The power light goes on on the adapter and "lsusb" shows the device name, but I still cannot connect. I also cannot get Ndiswrapper onto the laptop because the USB drive won't mount. What should I do?

[waterhead]

The key to getting a wireless to work in Linux is to determine the manufacturer of the chipset in it. If this is a USB wireless adapter, it is more difficult to determine. If you use NDISwrapper, you don't need to know the chipset manufacturer.

I don't understand why a USB drive prevents you from using NDISwrapper. It should be available from the installation CD, or downloadable from the DSL repository. There usually no need to compile it from scratch.

You will need the WinXP driver for this. This would be on a driver CD that came with the wireless, or downloaded from their web site. No USB drive needed for this either.

[RedFox5]

The USB drive poses a problem because I cannot transfer files. However, I did not think that NDISwrapper would be included, though. I'll check for it. What should I do once I find NDISwrapper? I do have the original CD.

[waterhead]

If your distro has no utility for installing programs from the CD, you can locate what you need on the CD and manually install them.

I don't see any mention of NDIswrapper om the DSL web site, so I don't even know if it is offered by DSL.

I would recommend installing a full Linux distro. You will have less trouble with things like this.

[RedFox5]

DSL does, in fact, include NDISwrapper as well as several other promising-looking programs. However, they don't seem to recognize the adapter. However, it may just be my general ignorance. I have two questions:
1) What settings should I enter into NDISwrapper to get it to recognize the adapter?
2) Is there another distro which is easier to use with more features? ( Note: the laptop has an amazingly huge 3 gig hard drive )

[waterhead]

NDISwrapper is run from terminal commands. You can get more info by running it without any options.

[paul2@localhost ~]$ ndiswrapper
install/manage Windows drivers for ndiswrapper

usage: ndiswrapper OPTION
-i inffile       install driver described by 'inffile'
-a devid driver  use installed 'driver' for 'devid' (dangerous)
-r driver        remove 'driver'
-l               list installed drivers
-m               write configuration for modprobe
-ma              write module alias configuration for all devices
-mi              write module install configuration for all devices
-v               report version information

where 'devid' is either PCIID or USBID of the form XXXX:XXXX,
as reported by 'lspci -n' or 'lsusb' for the card

You need a working WinXP driver, it is easier if it is in your home folder. It needs to be unpacked so that there is a .inf file and a .sys file. You then tell NDISwrapper where the driver files are located. In my example they are in a folder called "wireless". (do all commands as root)

ndiswrapper -i /home/redfox5/wireless/<driver>.inf

If there are no errors, then check that it is installed with this.

ndiswrapper -l

If everything looks good, run these commands.

ndiswrapper -m
ndiswrapper -ma
ndiswrapper -mi

Then load the module.

modprobe ndiswrapper

[RedFox5]

Oh, I was using the GUI interface. Unfortunately, I have also found another problem; I have no idea how to mount a CD. Thanks for your help here, but is there any distro in which all this is easier? I'm definitely willing to switch at this point. I usually use a Mac; this is really different and rather frustrating.

[waterhead]

You mean to tell me that DSL doesn't automatically mount an inserted CD? Have you looked in the /media or /mnt folders?

If you have to do it manually, then this would be the process.

First create a folder to mount the CD in (as root).

mkdir /mnt/cdrom

Then mount the CD in that folder

mount -t auto /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Don't forget to unmount it before removing it.

unmount /mnt/cdrom

If this doesn't work, there is another command to try.

mount -t isoo9660 -r /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom