HOWTO: Ndiswrapper Wireless Setup

[scootersmk]

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 I will leave the old instructions up just in case someone is using them, but otherwise this howto is out of date.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.

Code: Select all

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86 emerge ndiswrapper"

(substitute your keyword for "x86")

03-22-04- After going ready through some of these posts, it is becoming more and more apparent that there are better ways to get this up and running. The newer releases of ndiswrapper are much improved and the install script that they include is becoming more and more reliable. The ndiswrapper ebuild (metioned below) is looking much more promising. So, in short this method may not be the best one, but it is something to go off of, and it is a central place for us to discuss the changes. Right now I am looking at the changes and will hopefully update this howto to a much more simplified gentoo-like install. Suggestions are always welcome.(see update on 03=37-04)


03-21-2004-Well along with being busy with school and work, for some reason I stopped recieving emails for new posts. I was quite excited to see that my very own howto had reached 4+ pages, I just hope that they are not all problems. I will do my best to catch everything up to date an make the appropriate changes in the coming days. Thanks for all the advice.



I. Intro:
Ndiswrapper is a project that focuses on getting support for wireless network devices in which their manufactures do not release any sort of linux driver.

1. What should be posted in this thread:
-problems with doc
-bugs
-suggestions/improvements
-feedback(positive or negative)

2. Syntax Note: In the code blocks, all lines that start with "#" are commands to be typed.

If you have any other questions/problems or anything else that has to do with this thread please make your own thread that references this doc in the appropriate gentoo forum.

3. This guide only covers the very basics of getting the card to work. I have not covered steps about how to automate setting different iwconfig options that you may need to get your connection up and running.

DISCAIMER- Please be careful and test how your system repsonds to various card events such as a hot removal. There are instances where, as discussed below they may cause you system to lock up. So be aware of this possiblilty.
[/i]
II. Supported Cards:
Goto this page on the ndiswrapper.sf.net site to get an updated list of supported cards, the corresponding driver, and the corresponding vendor and device IDs (PCI-ids).
Link: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/supp ... psets.html


III. Bugs:
Ndiswrapper is still in its early development stages so is unstable. Please refer to the README file to see how to deal with problems you encouter with ndiswrapper.

IV. Installation Steps
**IMPORTANT** These install steps are for ndiswrapper-0.6 ONLY. The steps in this howto have changed significantly from the previous version. Please remove any previous versions of ndiswrapper before following these steps.
0. Emerge wireless-tools

Code: Select all

 #emerge wireless-tools

1. Make sure card is being detected
make sure that your card shows up when you run the "lspci" command(as root)

Code: Select all

#lspci 
....
.......
03:00 Network Controller: Broudcom Corporation BCM94304 802.11g (rev 02)

(lspci is included in the pciutils ebuild)

If your card is not being detected you need to reconfigure you kernel with Wireless Lan support and pcmcia support depending on your setup. (Skip ahead and read #2 before your recompile to save you from doing it twice)

2. Kernel Setup
DISABLE support for SMP in kernel. (This is very important, many headaches will be spared by doing so)

3. Download ndiswrapper
download the latest tarball from the files section of the ndiswrapper page on sf.net.
Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/
This HOWTO is for ndiswrapper-0.6.

4. Unpack tarball
from the directory where you saved the ndiswrapper tarball

Code: Select all

#tar -xvzpf ndiswrapper-0.6.tar.gz
#cd ndiswrapper-0.6

You should now be in the ndiswrapper directory.

5. Compile Driver
from the ndiswrapper directory that you should already be in

Code: Select all

#make install

6. Get the windows driver
Goto the ndiswrapper homepage and download the windows drivers that corespond to your chipset. Other drivers may work but are it is recomended that you try these first.

Link: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/supp ... psets.html

upack these drivers and find the .sys and .inf driver files and copy them to a directory called /lib/windrivers

Code: Select all

#mkdir /lib/windrivers
#cp <driver>.inf /lib/windrivers
#cp <driver>.sys /lib/windrivers

7. Load the windows driver

Code: Select all

#ndiswrapper -i /lib/windrivers/<driver>.inf

to verify that this worked make sure the following shows that your driver is present
(the output of this command may vary slightly)

Code: Select all

#ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 present

8. Load kernel module

Code: Select all

#modprobe ndiswrapper

If nothing goes wrong, you should now type "dmesg" and see and entry that looks something like this

Code: Select all

#dmesg
....
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

9. Load module on boot

autoload ndiswrapper module

Code: Select all

#echo "ndiswrapper" >> /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-<version>

substitute your kernel version for <version> . For example 2.6 or 2.4 (just the first 2 digits seperated by a ".") (mine is /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6)

10. Interface setup

At this time due to lack of standard setup and the many different setups and configurations for wireless cards along with other interfaces, this howto does not support automation of bringing up the wireless interface. Some possibilities are discussed in some of the replies in this tread.

Currently since I use my laptop with both wired and wireless ethernet at several different wireless site I bring up the wireless interface manually as follows:

Code: Select all

#iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid>
#ifconfig wlan0 up
#dhcpcd wlan0

That is the end of the Installation Steps.

V. Reference
Ndiswrapper SF.net page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/
Ndiswrapper Homepage:http://ndiswrapper.sf.net

VI. Successful Harware
Success? Please post your hardware specs for others to reference.
I will try to keep an update list of cards that have worked from using this doc:
-LInksys Wireless-G Notebook Adaptor wpc54g (Broadcom 94306 using Broadcom 94304 driver) pcmcia card
-truemobile 1180 (broadcom 4301) built into Dell Inspiron 8200
-Presario 2570us with a MiniPCI Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 02) card.
-Compaq Presario X1050CA (X1000 series) (Centrino)
-Broadcom 4320 (Dell Truemobile 1300) in my Inspiron 8600 works
-Toshiba Tecra 8000 Asus WL-300G and the Asus WL-100G PCMCIA(broadcom 94306)
-Dell Truemobile 1400 (broadcom)
- Dell D500 with the Intel Pro mini-pci card

*NOTE* some of these card may require various tweaks(discussed in replies), so continue reading replies if you run into problems

VII. Todo
1. keep up to date
2. Ebuild
-bugs.gentoo.org link to bug for new ebuild: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38017
-any ideas about ebuild please post on bugs page

[kosan]

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]

Thanks, I made the changes.

[EDIT]

OK, this time I made all the changes, sorry.

[manifest]

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

Code: Select all

alias wlan0 nidswrapper
options ndiswrapper if_name=wlan0
install ndiswrapper /etc/modprobe --ignore-install ndiswrapper; /usr/sbin/loadndisdriver 14e4 4320 /usr/lib/windrivers/bcmwl5.sys /usr/lib/windrivers/bcmwl5.inf

But on boot i get :

Code: Select all

 /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start
 * Bringing wlan0 up...
 * Failed to bring wlan0 up                                               [ !! ] 

here is the output from dmesg

Code: Select all

request_module: failed /sbin/modprobe -- wlan0. error = 256

Now if i manually cd into /lib/modules/2.6.1-gentoo/misc/

and do

Code: Select all

insmod ndiswrapper

it loads module
then run the driverloader like so

Code: Select all

loadndisdriver 14e4 4320 /usr/lib/windrivers/bcmwl5.sys /usr/lib/windrivers/bcmwl5.inf

it shows in dmesg

Code: Select all

wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:90:96:61:f0:2d

then i do

Code: Select all

/etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start

wlan0 becomes available

The only reason that i can think of is that my /lib/modules/2.6.1-gentoo/ is not linked correctly in my system because i can't just do

Code: Select all

insmod ndiswrapper

Or any other kernel module for that matter

[Deepu Sudhakar]

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

[flying_walus]

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:

Code: Select all

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
options ndiswrapper if_name=wlan0 install ndiswrapper /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ndiswrapper;  /usr/sbin/loadndisdriver 8086 1043 /lib/windrivers/W70N51.SYS /lib/windrivers/W70N51.INF

things appear fine if i run it by hand.

2. now that i've got the card up, I iwconfig it thusly

Code: Select all

iwconfig wlan0 essid myessid key myhexkey

and it seems to find my access point - iwconfig wlan0 shows the correct MAC for the access point, and the access point reports that a card with the correct MAC is accessing it...

but I can't connect to my net. dhcpcd dies, setting an ip with ipconfig and then pinging produces nothing... Can someone point me in the right direction ? the net works fine with the other machines on it

eqipment: intel 2100 3b Mini PCI ( centrino ) on a Dell D800

[Jyrinx]

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

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]

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]

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

Code: Select all

loadndisdriver 14e4 4320 /lib/windrivers/bcmwl5.sys /lib/windrivers/bcmwl5.inf

[tobimat80]

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

/usr/sbin/loadndisdriver 8086 1043 /lib/windrivers/w70n51.sys /lib/windrivers/w70n51.inf

[soda_popstar]

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:

Code: Select all

---snip---
eth0: Setting 100mbps full-duplex based on auto-negotiated partner ability 45e1.ndiswrapper version 0.3 loaded
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisInitializeString --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisInitializeString --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisInitializeString --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisInitializeString --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisInitializeString --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisInitializeString --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisInitializeString --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--
eth1: power management not possible

When I start up eth1, it loads with no errors, but it can't find any access points or anything so I can't use the Internet. I'm using ndiswrapper 0.3 because I'm using the 2.4.22 kernel.

EDIT: I installed the 2.4.24 kernel and used ndiswrapper 0.4 just now. Everything up to loading the drivers works fine, but when I run dmesg, I still get the same unimplemented thing. Running iwconfig gives me errors about version incompatabilities that I don't know how to fix.

Code: Select all

root@laptop utils # iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
 
eth0      no wireless extensions.
 
Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 16
of Wireless Extension, while this program is using version 15.
Some things may be broken...
 
wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Channel:0  Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
          Bit Rate=54Mb/s
          RTS thr=1600 B   Fragment thr=2344 B
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0/0  Signal level:-98 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

[meinholz]

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]

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]

10. Interface Setup
Check wireless interface

Code: Select all

#iwconfig
#cp /etc/init.d/net.eth0 /etc/init.d/net.wlan0

I think, you don't have to copy it, but just link to it:

Code: Select all

ln -sf /etc/init.d/net.eth0 /etc/init.d/net.wlan0

This avoids problems with different versions of the net.ethX script.

Maybe you should also mention setting ESSID etc. for instant-networking after install

[brooney]

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]

btw, thanks scootersmk

[TomaSz]

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

I also got the error.

He outputs

Code: Select all

Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address f.....
...
Code: Bad EIP value
Segmentation fault

I also tried recompiling, but it just keeps giving the error.

Anybody knows a possible answer?

[trapperjohn]

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.

I disabled eth0 to come up on boot, cause most of the time, I use wireless. If you don't want to do this, you could just edit /etc/init.d/net.eth0 to give the dhcpcd a shorter timeout (like 10sec or so). Just find 'dhcpcd' and replace it with 'dhcpcd -t 10'.

This can also be a problem, if you have a bad connection (wireless or wired) so the dhcp-client times out too early. But I think, asking the user on boot is sometimes nice ... but most of the time annoying

[psyeye]

I have a success-story for

Code: Select all

 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (rev 04)

in a Samsung X10, but I had to change the alias-defintion to

Code: Select all

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
post-install ndiswrapper /usr/sbin/loadndisdriver 8086 1043 /lib/ndiswrapper/w70n51.sys /lib/ndiswrapper/w70n51.inf

Otherwise it would not work... Maybe this should go into the HowTo as an alternative?

Thanks for your howto, with the above exception it "made my day"!

greets,
psyeye

[ShallowCorporateRaider]

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

Code: Select all

Network controller:  Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (rev 04)

I am able to get up through step 10 above, but when I do a

Code: Select all

iwconfig

I get the following:

Code: Select all

lo           no wireless extensions
eth0       no wireless extensions
wlan0     no wireless extensions

I am using the newest mm-sources (2.6.2) kernel.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[psyeye]

I get the following:

Code: Select all

lo           no wireless extensions
eth0       no wireless extensions
wlan0     no wireless extensions

Does anyone have any ideas?

I had the same problem and discovered that I forgot to compile wireless support into the kernel.
Check if you have

Code: Select all

Device Drivers --> Networking support  --> Wireless LAN (non-hamradio) --> Wireless LAN drivers (...) & Wireless Extensions
 

enabled!

greets,
psyeye

[Jondale]

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]

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

[psyeye]

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?

Did you try to change your alias-definition like I did? (see post above)
Maybe this helps. I'm sort of a noob when it comes to alias definitions - had to read manpages first to get an idea at all...

And remember:
Messages like

Code: Select all

NdisWriteConfiguration --UNIMPLEMENTED--

in the output of dmesg are harmless.

greets,
psyeye

[brooney]

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.

I disabled eth0 to come up on boot, cause most of the time, I use wireless. If you don't want to do this, you could just edit /etc/init.d/net.eth0 to give the dhcpcd a shorter timeout (like 10sec or so). Just find 'dhcpcd' and replace it with 'dhcpcd -t 10'.

This can also be a problem, if you have a bad connection (wireless or wired) so the dhcp-client times out too early. But I think, asking the user on boot is sometimes nice ... but most of the time annoying

This is what i ended up doing as well...disable the eth0 on boot. i also haven't installed my wireless to configure on boot yet. however, it still makes more sense to me to combine the network scripts into a single one that goes thru each interface in a user defined order and attempts to initialize each one and depending on the results and user preferences, moves to the next interface or exits