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Wireless doesn't work


joaonuno
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I installed the Mandriva LE 2005 in my ACER Aspire 1414 LMi and the drives wireless that I got at ACER's site with the NDISWRAPPER.

 

But I think that I need more help because I can't put Wireless working.

 

In the boot process I got the error "b44 device wlan0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization".

 

What I did wrong?

 

Thanks

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hi. :)

 

first of all, take a look at this howto for laptops and wireless.

 

i also found some information in the fedoraforum and i think it will be very useful:

Wireless Networking Setup

 

The wireless networking hardware industry is very competitive. Hardware vendors want to keep as much of their hardware design confidential as possible. They are thus reluctant to provide Open Source developers the technical information they require to write a suitable driver.

 

Never underestimate the knowledge, expertise and ability of Open Source developers !

Faced with a growing number of wireless adapters for which drivers were not available in Linux, they wrote a system whereby WINDOWS drivers can be used on a Linux machine.

 

The system relies on putting a Linux wrapper around a Windows wireless device driver, thereby making it work with the Linux operating system. It might sound radical, but it works well.

 

The wrapper is called ndiswrapper. You can read more about it at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

 

To install wireless networking on your ZD7000 using ndiswrapper, do the following:

 

a ) download the latest version of ndiswrapper. Untar it. cd into the ndiswrapper directory. Build it with the following command:

 

make install

 

Note: you'll need to have gcc and other tools (make) installed on your computer to do this. If not, start->system settings->add/remove programs and then tick 'development tools' and install them.

 

You will probably need to have kernel headers installed as well. I had full source installed, so I don't know if it will build without source or without the headers.

 

b ) download the WINDOWS wireless driver for your device. (For the ZD7000, go to www.hp.com and download SP28537.exe. Unzip the driver pack so that the individual files can be accessed.

 

c ) install the WINDOWS driver onto your Linux system using ndiswrapper using the following command:

 

su

cd sp28537a

/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf

 

;now check it's worked by typing

/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l

 

; you should see something like this:

[root@localhost downloads]# /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l

Installed ndis drivers:

bcmwl5a hardware present

 

 

If you don't see the 'hardware present' then it's not working, so don't go any further yet ! If it didn't find the device, it might only say ?driver present?. Double check that you installed the right driver if this occurs.

 

d) set ndiswrapper to automatically start itself at every bootup:

 

/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -m

 

 

e) create a default wlan0 configuration file so that the device can be configured. The file we need is

 

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

 

This can be created by:

 

su

kwrite /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

 

If you haven't installed kwrite on your installation, select another editor. BTW: I highly recommend kwrite, especially for source code editing.

 

 

Put the following text into the file. Note: this, like most other Linux configuration, is CASE sensitive.

 

# Broadcom wireless G via ndiswrapper (courtesy of DaveT 2004-08-31)

DEVICE=wlan0

BOOTPROTO=dhcp

HWADDR=

ONBOOT=yes

TYPE=Wireless

MODE=Managed

ESSID=

CHANNEL=

IPADDR=

DOMAIN=

NETMASK=

USERCTL=no

PEERDNS=no

GATEWAY=

IPV6INIT=no

RATE=Auto

KEY=

 

You'll need to change HWADDR, ESSID, KEY to your own settings. This can be done manually in this file or via a graphical configuration tool later.

 

 

f) restart Linux networking, thus starting the ndiswrapper device driver:

 

/etc/init.d/network restart

 

 

You should see a response like this:

 

Shutting down interface wlan0: [ OK ]

Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]

Setting network parameters: [ OK ]

Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]

Bringing up interface eth0:

Determining IP information for eth0... failed; no link present. Check cable?

[FAILED]

Bringing up interface wlan0: [ OK ]

 

Notes: When the network starts, it will now try to start up both eth0 and wlan0 during startup. If one is unavailable (e.g. no ethernet cable plugged in like mine normally), you'll get a red [FAILED] message during startup. This is nothing to worry about.

 

 

 

g) Check the network settings

 

/sbin/ifconfig -a

 

A typical response might be:

 

$ /sbin/ifconfig -a

 

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:9F:3E:CA:71

BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:0 (0.0 B ) TX bytes:308 (308.0 B )

Interrupt:209 Base address:0x3000

 

lo Link encap:Local Loopback

inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0

inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1

RX packets:21105 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:21105 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:4313675 (4.1 Mb) TX bytes:4313675 (4.1 Mb)

 

sit0 Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4

NOARP MTU:1480 Metric:1

RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:0 (0.0 B ) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B )

 

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:4B:57:EA:5B

inet addr:192.168.2.131 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

inet6 addr: fe80::290:4bff:fe57:ea5b/64 Scope:Link

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:920874 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:563766 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:1209803745 (1153.7 Mb) TX bytes:59138843 (56.3 Mb)

Interrupt:217 Memory:d2004000-d2005fff

 

Things to note: dhcp should have assigned your computer an IP address. A mac address should also be present. (In this example eth0 was not assigned an inet address and wlan0 was.)

 

 

h) Optimize the wlan0/device settings using a graphical configuration tool.

 

system-config-network

 

or

 

neat

 

This tool allows the user to set the SSID (network name) and to assign the mac to the driver by probing the device. (This could have been manually added to the configuration file as well.) ?wlan0? should appear as one of the network devices.

 

 

i)The network should now be ready to use.

 

First, do a ping test to the router:

 

ping 192.168.2.1 (some routers use different addresses... 192.168.1.1 is also popular)

 

btw: ?control c? stops ping.

 

next, ping a known address on the internet:

 

ping www.google.com

 

 

If you can ping the router but can't ping google, you've probably got one of two problems:

 

 

1)your computer doesn't have access to a DNS server.

 

You might have to check off ?Automatically obtain DNS information from provider?

 

 

2)there isn't a suitable route to the Internet.

 

You can check the routes available on your computer with the following command:

 

/sbin/route -n

 

You should see the following:

 

Kernel IP routing table

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface

192.168.2.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 wlan0

169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 wlan0

0.0.0.0 192.168.2.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0

 

The last line of this information states that there is a route for all ip addresses that didn't match the first rules. It uses the router (192.168.2.1) to get to try to resolve unknown Ips, ie get to the Internet.

 

If your routes doesn't have one that goes to the Internet, you can add one using the graphical configuration tool or issue the following command:

 

/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.1 dev wlan0

 

Note the not only does there need to be a route to the router, it must also use the right device, ie wlan0. The following will NOT work because it uses the wrong device (unless eth0 is also connected to the router):

 

0.0.0.0 192.168.2.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

 

j) Your network is now ready to use !

 

A few notes/comments:

 

1)Wireless communications are NOT secure, even with WEP. WEP can be <easily> cracked. Linux provides tools to secure communications on an unsecured backbone, ie wireless networks.

 

2) I've left firewalls out of this discussion. You need to investigate your firewall requirements and act accordingly.

 

3)ndiswrapper is kernel specific. It was compiled against the source code in your kernel. If you change kernels, you may get an error:

 

localhost ifup: ndiswrapper device wlan0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

localhost network: Bringing up interface wlan0: failed

 

You may be able to get around this problem by installing ndiswrapper with ?modprobe -?force?

 

 

The other way to fix this problem is to rebuild ndiswrapper.

good luck. :)

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