HOWTO: Ndiswrapper Wireless Setup

scootersmk · Last edited by scootersmk on Mon Dec 20, 2004 8:05 am; edited 18 times in total

Ndiswrapper Wireless Setup Howto:
Version: 2.0.1
Last Updated: 03-28-2004
Author: scootersmk
Thanks to: opello and everyone who has posted helpful tips on this tread.

Index
I. Intro
II. Suported cards
III. Bugs
IV. Installation Steps
V. Reference
VI. Successful Harware
VII. Todo

***UPDATES***(Please read FIRST!)

12-20-04 It has been awhile since I have updated this howto. Since my last update the ebuild for ndiswrapper has made some major progress. I strongly recommend that, in order to get ndiswrapper, you use the ebuild and follow the instructions that it gives. I will leave the old instructions up just in case someone is using them, but otherwise this howto is out of date. The only legitamate purpose this thread currenly has is a record of which cards will work with ndiswrapper. Glad to see some positive changes over the majority of this year. This will most likely be the last update to this howto.

06-01-04- If you just want to get this thing working and connected(noobs) , please follow the instructions below to install ndiswrapper-0.6 manually without an ebuild. I am currently working on getting a howto up for the newly released ebuild so stay tuned..

03-30-04- GOOD NEWS! The bugs for the ebuilds have been closed. There are now ebuilds in portage for ndiswrapper-0.6 as well as serveral previous versions. The one that you will have the best luck with is the just released, 0.6-r1. I have heard several reports of this ebuild working. I am really short on time at the moment, but as soon as I get a chance I will update this HOWTO for hopefully the final time. Let me know how the ebuild works out for you. I am not sure if the ebuild is keyword masked or not so, keep in mind everything that goes along with using masked packages, if infact it is masked.

03-27-04- First off at the this time the state of the ebuilds is not good. If you just want to get things working please stick with this howto until all the ebuild stuff gets sorted out. I have changed the instructions to go along with the new install steps for ndiswrapper-0.6. The step have been simplified signifigantly. I will try to make the appropriate changes when ndiswrapper or the ebuild progress.

03-22-04- One final note for tonight, there is now an ebuild available in portage. It is however still masked, so test at your own risk and report back here with success and back to the bug page with both failures and successes.

kosan · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2002 Posts: 29

Great guide, thanks for taking the time to help others out.

Two minor things to fix:

First, step 9 should be <device ID> <vendor ID> for the options instead of <vendor ID> <device ID> as you have it written (at least according to the way you define those two variables.

Second, along the same lines, in step 7 you define <vendor ID> but you say that 14e4 is your "Product ID" for consitency's sake it would be better so say it is your "device ID" so that in step 9 people know what to plug in, otherwise it may be confusing as to wheter you put that in or the PCI ID or what. It will just make it easier for people to follow as they are going through the steps.

Other than that great job.

ndiswrapper works on my Dell Inspiron 8200 (truemobile 1180) which is a broadcom 4301

scootersmk · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 12:38 am Post subject:

Thanks, I made the changes.

[EDIT]

OK, this time I made all the changes, sorry.
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manifest · n00b Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 13

The ndiswrapper works with my emachines 5310 but i can not get it to load on reboot. 'm currently updating my system using my wireless card. The card is
00:0c.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 02)

I'll post later in the day on my output. From what i can gather is that the ndiswrapper does not load.

<edit>

First off i have done everything above.
my /etc/modules.d/wlan0 looks like this

Deepu Sudhakar · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Aug 2003 Posts: 84

Yes, I get problem upon loading the Windows driver...a segmentation fault. I 've tried recocmpiling the loader executable to no avail.

flying_walus · n00b Joined: 07 Sep 2002 Posts: 58

ok, having 2 problems:

1. something about the modules.d/wlan0 file isn't working, namely, it's not running loadndisdriver.
the file looks like this:

Jyrinx · Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2004 8:29 pm Post subject:

Hey - if you'll allow me to toot my own horn :-)

, I've got a patch in Bugzilla (bug #38210) to automate things one step further: The patch adds to /etc/conf.d/net a new option, preifup_$IFACE (i.e. preifup_wlan0 or whatever), which is a command to be run before ifconfig is run to bring up the device. My intended purpose (which seems to work quite well) is to run an iwconfig command or script; this automates everything without having to hack any init scripts. If anyone's interested, please try it out, and pester a maintainer or two to commit it if you like it :wink:

Jyrinx

(Yeah, I'm getting a bit impatient, as the bug's been sitting there without activity for a few weeks now, and I think it addresses well an annoying lack of functionality at the moment ...)

powdahound · n00b Joined: 21 Jan 2004 Posts: 26 Location: NH, USA

Works for me on WPC54G.

I have the same problem as manifest though.

I can't pull the PCMCIA card out after initiating the wireless though or my whole computer locks up and I have to hard restart. Suggestions?

tdb · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 1:48 am Post subject:

Works for my Presario 2570us with a MiniPCI Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 02) card.

tobimat80 · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:02 pm Post subject: Re: emachines 5310

Works fine. I'm using this for my centrino:

soda_popstar · Apprentice Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 177

I'm having problems with my Centrino as well. The one thing that I noticed is that after loading the ndiswrapper module and initializing the driver, my dmesg gives this:

meinholz · n00b Joined: 05 Sep 2002 Posts: 8

I also have a Centrino with vanilla 2.4.24 and had the same problem. Do a make clean and recompile ndiswrapper. This got rid of the iwconfig error, but I still got the same UNIMPLEMENTED errors, so I'm stuck one step further along than you.

Does anyone have the centrino, 2.4.24, ndiswrapper 0.4 combination working? I've poked around on the ndiswrapper mailing list with no luck. Should I ask around on that list?

Step 11 should be /usr/sbin/loadndisdriver, not /usr/bin...

When I put the last line (the one that spans two lines in the forum) into /etc/modules/wlan0, I get an error on boot. Is there another typo in this line or could it be tied to loadndisdriver not working right in the first place???

Would this also work with the post about net.ath0???

Thanks for the help.

soda_popstar · Apprentice Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 177

Oh wow, I suddenly got it to work today! I still get the uninitialized thing, but my Internet still works perfectly. I suppose it's some sort of extraneous error (I don't really know, I'm just guessing). I'm using 2.4.22 and ndiswrapper 0.4 ... I don't really know what I did to make it work, it just did.

If it helps, I'm on a Compaq Presario X1050CA (X1000 series).

trapperjohn

brooney · Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2004 11:13 pm Post subject: got it working!!!

i've got wireless going on my inspiron 8600 using the built in broadcom wireless card...chipset bcm4306/bcm2050. the vendor id and device id was 14e4/4324

now i want to post an opinion/thought for comment

i want to automate things so that the wlan0 interface initializes on boot up. i've seen a number of different scripts being worked on in the forums. these scripts seem to be following the normal network script style with each interface with it's own script. they are quite good.

what doesn't make sense with me on this though is that if i am able to connect via the wireless interface, then most likely i'm not wanting to connect via the eth0 interface as i most likely do not have a cable plugged in. when there isn't a cable plugged in, the eth0 start takes a while to timeout. i personally would like to avoid this so my thoughts is that these scripts need to come together somehow. the single script should follow a logic such as it tries all the known essid's thru the wireless and then upon failure of all those, looks for an available wireless and then finally use the eth0 as a last resort.

even better would be to have a rules engine that allows each user to define how they want their network interfaces to be initialized. this would allow each user to define what they particularly want to initialize and what not to initialize and what other interfaces to initialize on failure of a previous attempt....i think you get the idea.

what do people think of this? am i out to lunch on think this?

brooney · Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2004 11:14 pm Post subject: oh yeah

btw, thanks scootersmk

TomaSz · n00b Joined: 17 Jan 2004 Posts: 5 Location: Belgium

trapperjohn · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:37 am Post subject: Re: got it working!!!

psyeye · Guru Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 409 Location: Germany

I have a success-story for

ShallowCorporateRaider · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:45 pm Post subject:

I am trying to follow this HOW-TO on a Dell D600 with a built-in

psyeye · Guru Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 409 Location: Germany

Jondale · n00b Joined: 05 Feb 2004 Posts: 4

Something I noticed that might be useful to someone trying to get a
Linksys Wireless-G PCI card working.

I could not seem to get my card to work using the latest drivers from the Linksys site but it worked just fine using the drivers that came with the card (on CD media).

For some reason following the above directions didn't seem to work for me. Perhaps I don't understand the process well enough and missed something. To get wireless to come up automatically for me on boot I did the following:

editted /etc/conf.d/net
- Just copied my eth0 line and replaced eth0 with wlan0

copied /etc/init.d/net.eth0 to /etc/init.d/net.wlan0

editted /etc/init.d/net.wlan0
- I went down just below the "start(){ " and added the line:
/usr/sbin/loadndisdriver 14e4 4320 /lib/windrivesr/BCML5.SYS /lib/windrivers/BCML5.INF

rc-update add net.wlan0 default

iwconfig wlan0 essid [myessid]

It comes up perfectly on boot now every time. I don't use WEP, I only allow certain MAC's to connect to my wireless router so if you use WEP you might have a few more steps than above.

ShallowCorporateRaider · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 8:48 pm Post subject:

Psyeye,
Strangely enough, having wireless support in the kernel DOES seem to make the wireless work better. How odd! :wink:

Thanks for the tip.
My card is working fine now, but I get an odd error on boot. It always returns an error when it tries to load the wlan0 module, and says that it cannot find the module dependancy information, and that I should run depscan.sh.
Despite this error, the driver is still loaded and works fine.
Any ideas on this?
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psyeye · Guru Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 409 Location: Germany

brooney · Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 1:05 pm Post subject: Re: got it working!!!