Martin from Dublin

Hi again wahaha,

'niswrapper -i' was supposed to show installed "wrapped" Microsoft drivers but it doesn't seem to have done so.

Do you have a link to a SuSe RPM for the newer version of ndiswrapper?

Martin

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wahaha

Hi Martin,

I just use fedora only. Actually i still new in linux.

Martin from Dublin

Okay, a different angle to try and solve this, I've just gotten a disk of Knoppix 5.1.1. and this has newer wireless software in it, but you run it from a live disk. Now, I run ndiswrapper and load the .inf/.sys files and the light on the device comes on, plus an icon for wireless appears in the system tray. But I then type 'iwconfig' and can get no further. Knoppix has it's own software called Kwlan but I can't seems to configue the settings this way either as the options are greyed out.

Any suggestions what to do next or should I start a new thread in the Knoppix forum?

Martin

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falcifer

Martin,

If you're still using Suse, I got my wireless adaptor working on openSuse 10.2.

Let me know if you're still looking for a solution, and I'll post what I did.

Martin from Dublin

Hi Falcifer,

That would be great, please post it. Do you know if Open SuSe 10.2 will run on an 800mhz processor and 256 RAM (I have a disk of Open SuSE, I sometimes use it on my main machine) as I would have to replace the SuSe runing on the laptop if I were to go ahead and those are the specs of my laptop. Oh, processor is AMD Sempron, laptop model is Packard Bell Easynote B3312.


Martin

PS: Did anyone experience difficulty getting onto this site over the weekend?

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falcifer

From your previous posts, you keep saying that "ndiswrapper -i" is supposed to show installed drivers. In fact, the "-i" option is to install. "-l" (- lowercase-L), will show installed drivers.

From what I've read, there were server problems, which meant the site was down. I know I had problems accessing the site.

According to this, you should be okay. As long as you're not wanting to do too much.
But I don't have much experience with laptops, so you might want to check that out more thoroughly.

As for getting the wireless network adaptor working...

I'm using the Belkin F5D7050B model, which uses the rt73 drivers on Windows. I don't know what version of the drivers came with your device, so I'll refer to mine.
You should also check this site, to see if your device is compatible. If you check the adapter itself, on the side with the AMC address, there should be a little box, with what looks like "FCC Belkin F5Dxxxx". Use the "find in this page" feature to locate it more quickly. Be sure to check more than once for it, too.

Anyway... this is what I went through;

I used ndiswrapper 1.35, which I compiled from source.
I tried using the version of ndiswrapper that came with openSUSE, but it didn't work.
Take the files - rt73.inf, rt73.sys - from the Windows installation disc, and put those into a folder "/home/user/rt73". If I remember rightly, one of the files had a name different from "rt73.*", but ndiswrapper will look for the .sys file when you install the .inf file, so they need to be called the same thing. Just rename them, so that they have the same file name. But be sure to leave the extension alone.

Next, once you have the files, and the ndiswrapper is installed, navigate to the rt73 folder, and in konsole, as root, type

ndiswrapper -i rt73.inf

This should give some output like "installing...", there'll be a brief pause, and then you'll get the prompt back.
You can check this with

ndiswrapper -l

Which should give some indication that the driver is installed.

Then type

ndiswrapper -m

Which should return some output, I don't remember exactly what it said, but it showed that it worked.

The type

modprobe ndiswrapper

which I don't think gives any output if it works.

Hopefully that all works.

Then you can leave konsole.

Now you want to go to YaST, choose "Network Devices", and "Network Card".
I doubt that this next step is really "proper", but it was how I got mine working, so I'll include it.
I had to choose "Traditional Method with ifup" from the network setup method. Then I rebooted and used the "User Controlled with NetworkManager" instead. If you can get the NetworkManager method to work for you first time, then do that. Otherwise, try choosing the ifup method, reboot and change it.

Now, my Belkin device is already listed here, if yours is too, ignore it.

Choose "Add".

Device Type = Wireless
Configuration Name = wlan0
Hardware Config Name = static-0
Module Name = ndiswrapper
Options = (empty) -- do not type this, just leave it empty
PCMCIA = unchecked
USB = unchecked

Choose "Next"

Device Type = Wireless
Config Name = wlan0
Automatic Address Setup = TRUE

Choose "Next"

The next set of settings should be for your network. So choose the appropriate settings here. It will all depend on how you have your router set up.

Choose "Next"

That should be it. Click "Finish", and YaST will run through some settings and try to set up the device.
If it stalls and halts the system, then either you tried the NetworkManager method first, in which case, reboot and try ifup, reboot and then try again. Or something went wrong (obviously).
If it all works then open up KNetworkManager, or the Gnome equivalent, input the network name, passphrase/code and connect.
My device sometimes halts at 28%, in which case I unplug the device, reconnect it and try again, which always works for me. I'm sure there's some way to "unplug" the device during startup, and then getting it to "plug in" again. But I don't know what it is, and the device is close enough to me that unplugging it and plugging it back in isn't a big deal.

If it doesn't work, let me know what steps you get stuck at, and what sort of errors you get.
I'm no expert, so I can only be of limited help, but I got mine working, and my Dad had problems getting the same device to work on Mandriva, so we did loads of research into getting it to work, so I know a little about this device.

Anyway... I hope it helps in some way.

Martin from Dublin

Hi again Falcifer,

I've upgraded the laptop to OpenSuse 10.2 with no problems but I'll propably need plently of help with the rest as I'm still a newbie (despite the avatar listing me as 'user').

What I'm now stuck on now is, I'm afraid I don't know how to compile ndiswrapper or anything else for that matter, could you provide instructions? When I try to un-tar it using the instructions that came with the download here's what I get;

linux:/home/martin # tar zxvf ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz
tar: ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
linux:/home/martin #

I've gone wrong already, as you can see.

Martin

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falcifer

Compiling ndiswrapper (as well as a lot of other programs) is pretty simple.

And just for the record, I'm still a Linux newb, too...

But once you download the source, put it somewhere. /home/martin/apps is a good place.

Open Konsole, and type cd /home/martin/apps
then... depending on what extension the ndiswrapper tar file has type;

tar xvzf ndiswrapper-x.x.tar.gz, or
tar xvjf ndiswrapper-x.x.tar.bz2

Then cd ndiswrapper-x.x
(the x.x part will depend on what version you download. eg. 1.35, 1.38, etc... you can always use ls (lowercase LS), to display the contents of the current directory, and copy and paste the file name, instead of typing it out each time.

Once in the ndiswrapper folder, type ./configure
This will check that you have everything you need to continue. If you get an error, it's nothing to worry about. It just means that there's no configure file. But you can continue anyway.
Generally, it's a good idea to use it anyway.

Next, type make. Let that do its thing.
Then, as root (type su, the put your root password in), type make install.
(You can also use sudo make install, which does the same thing, but it won't leave you as root once you're done. This is what I use, just so I'm not messing with things I don't have permission to mess with).

That should be it. You can then type ndiswrapper in the konsole, and it should give you usage info. And you're set.

falcifer

well, I'll leave that there, but I just read the end of your post...

I've gotten this error before. It means that you've typed something wrong.

Use ls to check the contents of the working directory. Make sure the version number is right, and that you're using the correct file extension. They come in .gz and .bz2 formats.

If that's right, and it still won't work, then try copying the file name from the ls output, and paste (shift+insert).

If it still doesn't work, then download the file again. It's possible the file didn't download properly.

Martin from Dublin

Hi again,

It was looking good until I got to the 'make' stage and then I got this error;

linux:/home/martin/folders/ndiswrapper-1.39 # make
make -C driver
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/martin/folders/ndiswrapper-1.39/driver'
Can't find kernel build files in /lib/modules/2.6.18.2-34-default/build;
give the path to kernel build directory with
KBUILD=<path> argument to make
make[1]: *** [prereq_check] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/martin/folders/ndiswrapper-1.39/driver'
make: *** [all] Error 2
linux:/home/martin/folders/ndiswrapper-1.39 #

Any idea what this means?

Martin

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