Intro
I had a terrible experience finding info on how to set up ndiswrapper to work with my WMP54G card, but after a few days I finally figured it out and decided to post about it. Hopefully someone will find this useful. YMMV, but it should work with any card supported by ndiswrapper

Procedure
You're going to need to add two lines to /etc/modprobe.conf. Here are the lines I added:

The part that gave me the most headaches is the area between the curly braces. As you can see loadndisdriver takes four arguments:

Here's how I got the arguments:

• First, you'll need the windows driver for your card so grab the .sys and the .inf files from your card's CD (or where ever the drivers are). For my card they were called bcmwl5.sys and bcmwl5.inf. It doesn't really matter where you put these files. I put them in /etc/ndiswrapper. These are the last two arguments to loadndisdriver.
• To find pci_vendor and pci_device you need to run the lspci command. Here's what mine looks like:
  
  CODE
  # lspci
  00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 02)
  00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 02)
  00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
  00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
  00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
  00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
  00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905B 100BaseTX [Cyclone] (rev 24)
  00:0e.0 Multimedia video controller: Zoran Corporation ZR36120 (rev 03)
  00:0f.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 03) <=== My wireless card
  00:10.0 Multimedia audio controller: Aureal Semiconductor Vortex 1 (rev 02)
  01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15)
  
  Notice the numbers at the beginning of the line for your card (00:0f.0 for mine), and then run lspci -n:
  
  CODE
  # lspci -n
  00:00.0 Class 0600: 8086:7190 (rev 02)
  00:01.0 Class 0604: 8086:7191 (rev 02)
  00:07.0 Class 0601: 8086:7110 (rev 02)
  00:07.1 Class 0101: 8086:7111 (rev 01)
  00:07.2 Class 0c03: 8086:7112 (rev 01)
  00:07.3 Class 0680: 8086:7113 (rev 02)
  00:0d.0 Class 0200: 10b7:9055 (rev 24)
  00:0e.0 Class 0400: 11de:6120 (rev 03)
  00:0f.0 Class 0280: 14e4:4320 (rev 03)  <=== My wireless card
  00:10.0 Class 0401: 12eb:0001 (rev 02)
  01:00.0 Class 0300: 10de:002d (rev 15)
  
  Match up the numbers you found earlier to locate your card. The numbers i'm looking for in my example are 14e4:4320. 14e4 is pci_vendor argument of loadndisdriver and 4320 is the pci_device argument

To test this out install the ndiswrapper module:

If there were no error messages, so far so good. If the command "iwconfig" (part of the wireless-tools package) recognizes wlan0 and doesn't say "no wireless extensions" then everything installed correctly. Now you can use iwconfig to setup the access point, essid, etc. See the man page for iwconfig for more info. Here's how I would start my internet manually:

Just replace the X's with your key if you use WEP (you do use WEP, right? ) and replace the Z's with the name of your access point.

Now you're probably going to want to start all this up automatically. You need to create a file called /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 and put this in it:

Have a look at the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless script to see what variables you can put in this file. Now all you have to do is reboot and see if your internet comes up.

Conclusion
I hope that someone can find this useful. Of course is anything here is wrong or if there's an easier way, then by all means do tell!

Thanks for posting this! Very nice! I hope my household shipment arrives soon and I can get my desktop up and running using this.

i have tried ndiswrapper before, but i had some issues with the WEP key, i use 128bit encryption which consists of like 24 hex decimals, but i read some where that ndiswrapper only recognizes 10 or something, is this true?

nope, i use 128-bit encryption myself

you couldn't also give specific ndiswrapper install instructions could you? it would help me out a great deal!!!!

If you're having issues with a particular part of my guide I'd be glad to help, just let me know what the problem is.

I use ndiswrapper myself for my centrino wireless, and there are some excellent instructions in the INSTALL file that comes in the tarball that are what got me through

ya, i know, i just got so frustrated when i tried to install it on CE that i gave up, i need to try again

btw is there any particular reason there is no fast reply button on this thread?

got a problem.

it errored.

I have mandrake 10, and I got a loadndisdriver: command not found.

According to the HOWTO above, that command would be run as root. Are you trying it as root? If you're not sure how:

Open a terminal (Konsole, Gnome-Terminal)
type su <enter>
<enter your root password and press enter>

Then try the loadndisdriver command

Great how-to...thanks to beesea. And all of this will only work on kernel 2.6.x, and not kernel 2.4.x....right?

I don't think anything done here is kernel-specific so it should work for a 2.4 kernel, but I'm not completely sure

I'm so glad I found this thread! I'm trying to install ndiswrapper too and this has been the best info I've found on it yet, however I still can't get it to work. It looks like it should, but it doesn't.

I can see the Network Connection in the control panel, but it's doing nothing and shows "not connected". I'm not using WEP (yet ) to keep it simple and my card (a D-Link DWL-510) works fine under XP, which is how I'm able to get on line at all.

I'm using Mandrake 10.0 Community straight from the discs and can't update until I can connect it via my wireless card - cable modem is two floors up. Are there any dependencies that I need to install to make it work? I noticed that both Wireless Tools and the DHCP daemon were absent, but am I likely to be missing anything else?

I also noticed a deliberate mistake with the first bit of code - it should look like this:



The modprobe wouldn't work until I put a colon between the two numbers that came up for me. Other than that the walkthrough was bloody brilliant - I just need to get it finished off! Any pointers?

in the install file it says that you can enter 10 hex digits for 128bit incryption, i have 26..... is this a problem, also when i type iwconfig it says command not found, did you have this same problem?

I had the same problem with that. Mandrake doesn't seem to install the Wireless tools on install. I searched for "wireless" within the Software Install screen (in descriptions) and found that application. Unless it's installed you won't be able to run iwconfig.

No idea about WEP I'm afraid

having problems with this.... what if i wanted a static ip?

HAVING A PROBLEM WITH NDISWRAPPER, PLEASE See this thread:

Please help

Just curious. Anyone know how to get lspci on a Mandrake 10 system? All that gets installed is lspcidrake, and while it gives roughly the same information, it confuses the dickens out of ndiswrapper.

arlen, AFAIK it's the pciutils RPM... I'm not at a Linux computer to verify.

In the future, you can do what I did: use rpm.pbone.net to search for "lspci" and see which RPMs come up. Or since we're in Mandrake, you can issue "urpmf lspci" at the CLI which will query the urpmi database for anything containing lspci. Then, "urpmi RPM_NAME" to install.

Hello everyone!

I just got a RTL8180 chip to work in Mandrake 10.

I noticed that everyone is talking about only being able to enter 10 digits. Well I typed all 26 hex digits of my key in using iwconfig key XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and poof it worked. So the whole thing saying that it only accepts 10 hex digits is a little foobar.

Second I suggest using the source code version of ndiswrapper. I found it to work very well over the packaged ndiswrapper.

Also for some reason wireless-tools is not installed by default (go figure) You'll have to go into the Mandrake Control Center and Install that Package. Should be on CD1 if you wish to do it by hand.

I did not find any of the GUI tools to be at all helpful and sometimes they would go into the config file I just made and overwrite some of the stuff I entered.

Also!!! I almost forgot. You should follow the instructions given to you by the srouce code INSTALL file.

1) make install

then find the INF file and

2) ndiswrapper -i /$THE_PATH_TO_YOUR_INF_FILE/someinf.inf

For some crazy reason (something about how Mandrake implements lspci and it's functions in perl) you can not use ndiswrapper -l (well you can but there is a big mess behind it.) Besides ndiswrapper -l should not do you any good. It just tells you what you can find in /etc/ndiswrapper/

3) modprobe ndiswrapper

check dmesg to see if the device was found

4) iwconfig all of your stuff ESSID and KEY

5) if you are using dhclient then dhclient wlan0

...else...

5) ifconfig wlan0 <ipaddress> netmask <somenetmask>

That should allow you to ping the router and then you can setup all of your DNS info and gateway to ping the internet.

Cheers!

I have followed the directions to the letter; however it still does not work.

When I type modprobe ndiswrapper I get:
[root@localhost etc]# modprobe ndiswrapper
Usage: loadndisdriver [-a] [driver]
FATAL: Error running install command for ndiswrapper
[root@localhost etc]#

my modprob.conf file looks like this
alias eth0 e100
alias sound-slot-0 i810_audio
install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe usb-uhci; /bin/true
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
install ndiswrapper /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ndiswrapper && { loadndisdriver 14e4:4320 /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5.sys /etc/ndiswrapper/lsbcmnds.inf; }

one other note when I type iwconfig it looks like this
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

I don't see the wlan0, but I asume it is because the loadndisriver is erroring.

Thanks for any advise you have.

Jason Sharp

I've been dealing with MandrakeLinux all week using the same card Belkin F5D-7010 as the OP. No luck and very, very frustrating. Anybody care to spoon-feed a Linux-noob or should I just keep paying Mr. Gates and at least I will be able to use my hardware?

It's a shame the instructions don't inlcude the correct syntax (as I can understand the syntax via a text file) because I've tried every single syntax possibility in the OP and I'm obviously missing a MAJOR STEP. C'mon, aty least point some of the Winbloze peeps to a basic tutorial about Unix commands. Yes, I found the FAQ and that did help a bunch but after 20+ hrs. I've just about had enough of Mandrake/Knoppix and all of this BS...

'Sorry for the venting but please understand that I'm TRYING very hard and that sucks if you try so hard and fail because of something very simple...

I too have had a lot of trouble getting ndiswrapper working with my Belkin F5D7000uk PCI card.

If this helps I had the same problem when running IWCONFIG - no wlan0 showing up.

After much trial and error I discovered it was because of the way I had referenced the bcmwl5.inf file (my card driver).

I'd simply pointed ndiswrapper at /mnt/win_c/inf/bcmwl5.inf which didn't work. However I've found that by taking a copy of the bcmwl5.inf file, and the two associated driver files on the Belkin cd (namely: bcm43xx.cat and bcmwl5.sys) and moving them to the /driver folder under the folder I unpacked ndiswrapper to, the driver is now working.

You'll have to use:

ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5.inf

or similar to remove the driver before you point ndiswrapper in the right direction.

I'm not out of the woods yet though. I can set the essid, key and ip address of the card using iwconfig and ifconfig respectively - however I seem unable to ping the router!

Any ideas where I might be going wrong? There must be something I've missed but I'm at a loss to see what I need to do to get the card talking to my router. I'm starting to feel like THISUKS. I'm a newbie to Linux though have years of experience in computing but I find the material available on actually getting Linux up and running extremely esoteric in nature. A few pointers to websites that give guidelines on getting things like network cards and graphics cards working under Linux that don't assume a significant amout of tacit knowledge would be much appreciated.

Euge

Hooray! My first post under Linux.

Have finally got the Belkin wireless card going (and it's quick!).

It's a bit weird really. After hours upon hours with no luck (after getting wlan0 recognised a few days ago) connecting to my router I discovered the problem could be fixed through Linux's Firewall setting. I don't know about anyone else but I chose the minimum security settings when installing 10.0 but did opt for the firewall. If you can get wlan0 recognised but can't see your network I suggest you try the following:

In X under System/Configuration/configure your computer
choose 'Security'
then 'Firewall'
Choose whatever you like settings wise (try 'No Firewall' To begin with to make sure - you can always go back later) then click OK.
You are here asked what 'Net Device' you use to connect to the internet. In the drop down you should see 'wlan0:'. Select this. Now your Wireless connection works! (hopefully for you - it did for me).

My /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 file is as follows (in case this helps):

DEVICE=wlan0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
DHCLIENT_SET_DOWN_LINK=yes
MTU="1454"
ONBOOT=yes
GATEWAY="192.168.2.1"
GATEWAYDEV=wlan0
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
WIRELESS_ESSID="XXXXXXXXXXX"
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
WIRELESS_MODE="managed"
WIRELESS_POWER=yes

For a static IP make ifcfg-wlan0 like:

DEVICE=wlan0
BOOTPROTO=static
MTU="1454"
ONBOOT=yes
GATEWAY="192.168.2.1"
GATEWAYDEV=wlan0
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
WIRELESS_ESSID="XXXXXXXXXXX"
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
WIRELESS_MODE="managed"
WIRELESS_POWER=yes
BROADCAST="192.168.2.255"
IPADDR="192.168.2.3"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"

Obviously alter your IPADDR as you see fit. Hope this helps some peeps.

Regards,

Euge

Hello evrybody,
at first: thx beesea for your Howto

now my prob

I followed your instructions and filled the parameters for loadndisdriver.
It started an showed:
Calling putdriver ioctl
Parsing the inf file.
Dirver version: 07/09/2004, 5.170.0709.2004
Calling startdriver ioctl
Segmentation fault <--- there it stops

my WLancard is a Netgear MA521 with the RTL 8180 Chipset.
The first time I tried to load the normal MA521 driver, after the fault I used the Chipset driver directly from Realtek. (Always the WinXP/2K versions)

always the same fault.
hope you can help me, but one thing: I'm a real noob in Linux, so plz show mercy

cya
flix

I found I have to put another semi column between the sys driver and the inf file in the modprobe config:



Everthying else work nice, however I have one issue, my wireless AP is running WPA, and i did get the wpa_supplicant working with ndiswrapper, however I have to do this all the time:



Does any one know how to have this line run automatically after the ndiswrapper module is loaded?

Thanks

Steven

Thanks a million, beesea. Excellent, clear instructions, even for a Linux newbie like me.

Followed your instructions, and I am now wireless with my own WMP54G card. It took me about 90 minutes, but that was mainly because I can't count the number of leading '0's when entering a WEP key. {*slaps head*}

A couple of clarifications, based on my experience and questions in the rest of the thread:

1. I did need to run the commands given as root (Post #10 in this thread).
2. I didn't appear to need the colon between the two 4-digit hex numbers in the modprobe.conf configuration file changes (apparently contrary to Post #13).
3. I did need to change the internet connection on the firewall as I was already up and running with a wired connection (Post #23).

Another item which would have saved me some time: restarting the network after changing the settings does not require a complete reboot (I m still "thinking Windows" aren't I?) but can be achieved using "/etc/init.d/network restart" instead, as described in this thread.

Hey everything.

I just happen to find this website and decided to upgrade my 10.0 mandrake installation to 10.1 community.

Upgrade went for a long time, urpmi --auto-select did the work and everything looks upgraded.

Now i tried to use the guide in this post to setup the Intel Wireless Adapter and ran in trouble.

No matter what i do, its not working out. Output from dmesg confirms that ndiswrapper is loaded

ndiswrapper version 0.4 loaded

Here is the error part:

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; No such device.

Please help. This is a IBM R50 series laptop. If you need any details please let me know i will post them here.

have you load up ndiswrapper with modprobe? it says wlan0 is not there!!!

Yes i have. After i do the modprobe, and see dmesg, i get the following in it:

ndiswrapper version 0.4 loaded

Whoops! It's on the fritz again.

The network connection doesn't stay up more than a few hours.If I run iwconfig, it reports millions (literally) of "Invalid misc" packets. The SSID, router address and WEP key are still reported correctly.

At first I thought it might be the router - there are some reports of instability with the WRT54G - but rebooting that didn't do the trick. I thought it might be a problem with getting a new DHCP lease from my cable provider (NTL), but even connecting to the router doesn't work. Running service network restart doesn't clear it, although a complete computer restart does.

Now, doing a restart every day is not something I want to have to do! Apart from the inconvenience, I wish to impress my Windows-using friends with tales of 100's of days of uptime, as properly befits a Linux system. It also annoys my wife, who just wants to browse the web.

So, once again, any ideas?

Since im now mod (for my sins) of this Im pinning this as a topical and useful one.

i have ibm r50 with intel wireless 2200 bg
also mdk 10.1

do you think that this procedure you are writing about will work for me?
thx

I have a r50 as well. I did a scratch install on 10.1 CE and the wireless worked out of the box. It used ipw2100 driver though.

anand, I am trying to get my IWP2200 working, where did you copy the firmware? For som reason the firmware will not load.

Sorry never saw this message earlier.

Anyways what i got running was from a clean 10.1 CE. It like 10.0 Official recognised the wireless and showed ipw2100 module, however i could never got it running in 10.0. When i got 10.1 CE, a clean install and fiddling around with the wireless (nothing much, just that the wireless won't come up on boot up automatically and stuff) i got it running.

Though i have a very strange problem, when i shutdown the laptop, the wireless is still ON I have to keep the power button pressed in order to shut it down. I can't figure how to shutdown wireless on shutdown.

wireless config

That was a link that i found incredibly useful as far as installing wireless. I got the source tarball at sourceforge. It works like a champ everytime.

I too had to install the wireless tools. I then wrote a little script (which i run as root) that brings down eth0 brings up the wlan0 and then pulls an ip after setting essid, channel. i don't set those in my ifcfg-wlan0 file since i roam to different networks.

i got this working on both my dwl-650 (which is a realtek 8180) and my wife's broadcom wireless (94306 or something like this) on her dell.

ifup is your friend. :-)

oh yeah, one other thing. one problem i had was getting outside the firewall. if you go to /etc/shorewall and then i think the interfaces file, you then change local next to wlan0 to network (or whatever it is that eth0 is set to). then your firewall stays up and you can still get around.

I feel like I am almost there, but have not quite managed to get this WPM54G card working.

I have managed to get ndiswrapper working, with wireless tools installed, the drivers have loaded successfuly, wlan0 is detected, I can see my wireless router with iwlist, I can set all parameters with iwconfig, but what I can't do is set the ESSID and actually connect to the wireless router.

Has anyone else been stuck with this problem and found a way past it? I would really appreciate some help.

To set essid

iwconfig wlan0 essid "youressid"

I have more problem cause the latest 10.1 have loaded the beta acx111 native driver from the acx100/111 sourceforge project, and I think it cause conflict with ndiswrapper.

I am using NETGEAR WG311V2, I have setup ndiswrapper fine, but the iwconfig doesn't take any of the pramameter I setup.

i had to install the wireless tools for it to work. if i don't know the name of software that i want to load, the gurpmi interface is really great about searching using the documentation for rpms. it'll always find what you're looking for. just do the wireless search.

i'm having the same issues as many people on here - so much for 10.1 working for wireless "out of the box".

i've got the IPW2200 intel wireless - the kernel that comes with mdk 10.1 has an ipw2200 drivers built in as a module.

anyway - i'm at the ndiswrapper stage where doing ndiswrapper -l shows my driver installed -
w22n51 driver present, hardware present

so far so good.
however, when i load the driver with
/sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper , dmesg reports :

ipw2200: ipw2200_boot.fw load failed
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware : 0XFFFFFFFE
ipw2200: No space for Tx
ipw2200: failed to send SCAN_REQUEST_EXT command

dmesg DOES report that ndiswrapper has loaded ok

ndiswrapper: driver w22n51 (intel.... blah blah ) added

I have just roll back to MDK 10.0 and still having the iwconfig not taking my configuration problem, I think the problem might not be in the MDK10.1 but in the latest 0.12 build of ndiswrapper it self

i've got everything working via ndiswrapper right now - everything except a network connection.

no errors in dmesg, iwconfig and ifup wlan0 (static ip) are fine - even the wireless light on the front of my hp nx9030 laptop lights up.

the only thing i can think of is that my wireless base station is one of those 2 aerial belkin 802.11b thing, 11Mb/s rate, connected via rj45 network cable to my hub.

the ipw2200 is a 802.11G card - 54Mb/s rate.

i'm totally at a loss now as to what to do next , as i'm getting NO errors at all dmesg or anywhere else.

Hi,

Just my 2cents with a method i've successfully used with my dell truemobile 1300 with mdk 10.1 Official. I assume you know a bit how ndiswrapper works and what's required (.inf and .sys files)

- installed mdk with default options
- went to software installation and asked for ndiswrapper, 0.9.1 is offered install it.
- in the .inf file folder "ndiswrapper -i xxxx.inf" (for me it's bcmwl5.inf)
- then "ndiswrapper -l" to check it's installed and that "hardware present" is mentionned
- "modprobe ndiswrapper" for ndiswrapper to be effective
- "ifconfig wlan0 up" to bring up the wlan interface
- then i don't go crazy with commnd lines to setup my wifi and just head to control center/hardware/network cards ; there you should now see your wireless card, just click the "launch config wizard" button and follow all the steps ; the only things i've mentionned are : ssid, wep key, dhcp server IP all other options were left as they were.
- at the end network interface is restarted, and everything is working fine!
- as i want this to be permanent, i finish with 'ndiswrapper -m"

That's all, my wifi is brought up each time i boot, when i go away from home i can easily change my wifi settings with the same wizard described above!

i've used this method more than 10times (i reinstalled mdk a lot as a noob i am killed things and couldn't revert to working envrionnment)

I'd been totaly crazy with the wifi setup for months and was about to change the wifi card to be able to discover linux (i can't use ethernet at home, too painful in my flat), my mdk is in french so don't be surprised if u don't exactly have the menu i say but you should find them easily!

Hope this can help

thanks for posting that. however, my HP nx9030 has a on-off button for the internal intel 2200. apparently this tell the card to switch the "radio" on and off.

i'm aware of rfswitch, but the instructions on usage are confusing. anyone else manage to figure out how to switch their card "on" and "off" via software?

For those people who have a ACX111 or ACX100 based WiFi NIC, the 10.1 MDK have intergrated a very old module of the ACX100/111 sourceforge project driver in the module, you will need to remove them before setting up ndiswrapper

I am not sure about whether this will remove it entirly or the symlink still exist:



Source - http://www.houseofcraig.net/acx100_howto.php

This is off of my little BB, and should possibly work with other .INF drivers (case sensitive when naming your driver to install) that might help some.

I bought myself, quite a while back, an Acer Aspire 1500 notebook. Under Linux, trying to get the wireless adapter to work, was a pain, especially using the ndiswrapper or Linuxant driver. So I'm posting this doc to show how I got it working quite well. It should also work on other notebooks with a similar adapter (and possibly even different adapers). Hope it helps someone.


********************************************************************************
********************************************************************************
*
********
Installing Wireless Broadcom driver on the Acer Aspire 1501

Mandrake 10.1

This set up is for a static IP (use an address outside of your wireless routers DHCP range - set up your router according to it's specs)
********************************************************************************
********************************************************************************
*
********

1. If not already installed, install ndiswrapper-0.9-1mdk rpm package from the Mandrake CD. (You can try newer versions, but ndiswrapper 0.12 had some issues for myself so, I went back to the original. It works fine.)
2. Get the BCMWL5.inf file and the BCMWL5.sys files from a windows distribution. Copy them both into the same directory. For our purpose it will be /install.
3. Run... ndiswrapper -i /install/BCMWL5.inf. (The files and commands are case sensitive so see how it was copied in with a ls of the /install directory- use your own path here to wherever you copied the file to.)
4. Run... modprobe ndiswrapper
5. Run... iwconfig wlan0 essid ESSID - ESSID = your wireless routers id name here . - eg. DLink
6. Run... iwconfig wlan0 key restriced XXXXXXXXXX - use this if you use WEP - eg. 2E456A874C - if need be for your routeer add more iwconfig lines in this section
7. Run... ifconfig wlan0 XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX up - use your IP here
8. Run... ndiswrapper -m

9. Edit your /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add all of these lines to the end of the file

modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig wlan0 essid ESSID - ESSID = yourroutersidnamehere
iwconfig wlan0 key restriced XXXXXXXXXX - use this if you use WEP
ifconfig wlan0 XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX up - use your IP here
route add -net YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY netmask 255.255.255.0 gw ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ dev wlan0
route add -net 0.0.0.0 netmask 0.0.0.0 gw ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ dev wlan0
route del -net 0.0.0.0 netmask 0.0.0.0 dev eth0

XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX = your IP you want to assign - eg. 192.168.1.5
YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY = your routers network - last number is always 0 - eg. 192.168.1.0
ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ.ZZZ = your routers LAN IP number - used for the gateway - eg. 192.168.1.1

********************************************************************************
********************************************************************************
*
********

That's it. Reboot. Should be able to connect to the internet.

DHCP was not used for the wireless adapter cause it failed.

If you need to connect with the actaul built in ethernet card, you will need to either use a script or manually delete/comment/uncomment the last route command in the rc.local file. Of course make sure you actually configured it. You may then need to also uncomment the route add line above too. It'll slow down requests having the 2 gateway routes.

Of course you can just write a shell script or even at a terminal prompt type out the route add/del commands as needed without reboots.

Trying to add the card in as an actual loadable module, etc, would intermittently cause a whole bunch of non-working issues, so the adding it to the rc.local file seemed to be the fastest and easiest with the least amount of problems.

This should also work on other distros as all of the files needed, used or edited are all the same.

That's it.

Enjoy!

This is a very useful thread, but I can't get too far getting the embedded wireless in my Compaq Presario 3050 working.

I just recently installed Mandrake 10.1. When I saw that I couldn't wireless going with the system config, I sought out ndiswrapper on the net. I downloaded it and attempted to get things going. However I can't get it to build. The output I get is shown below. Anyone have a thought on how to fix this? Thanks.


[root@Marlowe ndiswrapper-0.12]# make install
make -C driver install
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/jallison/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-0.12/driver'


WARNING: Kernel seems to have 4K size stack option (CONFIG_4KSTACKS) removed; many Windows drivers will need at least 8K size stacks. You should read wiki about 4K size stack issue. Don't complain about crashes until you resolve this.


make -C /lib/modules/2.6.8.1-12mdk/build SUBDIRS=/home/jallison/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-0.12/driver \
NDISWRAPPER_VERSION=0.12 \
EXTRA_VERSION= modules
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.27-0.pre2.1mdk'
make -C /home/jallison/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-0.12/driver CFLAGS="-D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux-2.4.27-0.pre2.1mdk/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -pipe -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -march=i586 -DMODULE -DMODVERSIONS -include /usr/src/linux-2.4.27-0.pre2.1mdk/include/linux/modversions.h" MAKING_MODULES=1 modules
make[3]: Entering directory `/home/jallison/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-0.12/driver'
make[3]: *** No rule to make target `modules'. Stop.
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/jallison/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-0.12/driver'
make[2]: *** [_mod_/home/jallison/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-0.12/driver] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.27-0.pre2.1mdk'
make[1]: *** [default] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/jallison/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper-0.12/driver'
make: *** [install] Error 2

Here's an obvious hint: keep a separate copy of the files you have changed.

I've been off the net for a couple of days trying to debug what happened after running Mandrake Update. It turns out (it seems) that it overwrote my copy of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0, as painstakingly set up according to the instructions in the first post of this thread.

Of course, I'm now happily back in contact with the rest of the world. A minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.