jbuckley2004

One of the best write-ups on the use and abuse of ndiswrapper that I"ve seen... http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/sh...threadid=284525 Hope you're getting farther! J

Thanks, Qchem. I should have (and meant to) mention that last night. It was late. Ddavisart, let me explain that there's just a little pit-fall here that I know from bitter experience. When you try to install the kernel-source (um... do a search-by-name in the Mandrake installer for "kernel-source", without the quotes), you're likely to see more than one version is presented to you. You'll need to know the version of the kernel that you're running with to install the right one. To find that, from a console session, just type uname -r, and it'll come back with the version for you. It'll match one of the versions of kernel-source, and that's the one to install. Then you'll be able to build ndiswrapper for yourself following their instructions. What you will have done is to create a kernel module for yourself that you will install using the modprobe command. I'm sure that the info you've seen already from the ndiswrapper pages starts to go into it, but you'll want to read a little about modprobe and it's switches. Also, thinking ahead again, I suspect strongly that there's one more package you will need that is not installed by default. You'll probably need/want to install either dhcpclient (I think the search works if you look for dhclient), or dhcpcd. These packages both provide the means to handle dynamic ip addressing and make it easier to connect to the router. Ok, so here's the road-map (and you're closer than you think). You're very close to building ndiswrapper, and you have the windows driver that it can use to make the kernel module for you. It's installed using modprobe. Next you will use the ifconfig and iwconfig commands to set the parameters for your wireless card (you know, the frequency, the essid, the transmission rate) to match the router. (Please read up. I'll continue to talk you through this when you've reached the point of needing info on iwconfig and ifconfig but specific Qs are much easier to handle than general instructions) You can use the iwlist wlan0 scan command to see if your card can hear your router even before the parms are set correctly. Since you've dealt with that on the windows side, you're probably familiar with most of this. The last step will be to change one of the last initialization files used by linux to bring the thing up when you boot. But one step at a time. It keeps the frustration level down. ;> BTW, I was the only one responding 'cause there wasn't much more to be added (yet). Right? Qchem jumped in just as soon as I left something important out! ;>

Ok, that's a start. But you still need to fully identify the chip set. We know (so far) that it's a broadcom chipset, 4306 series, but we also need the 8 hex digits form the >lspci -n command. For instance, it may show up something like 14E4:4320. If fact, if I happen to get the right one, you're in luck. There's plenty of drivers that work, via ndiswrapper, with this one. But make sure first. Then, your next mission, should you decide to accept, is to go to this link: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/List and find that exact number. On that page it'll point you to the driver you need, and the D.A. will disavow all knowledge of your actions. Um... Sorry. Wrong program. ;> Ok, thinking ahead, you'll need to then install ndiswrapper. And, from what I understand, you very well may need to uninstall the one that came with your system (that is, if you have already installed it) and install a newer version. Don't panic too much; it's not really hard, but you'll be forced to do more than a little reading from the ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net pages on how to do that. I'm not fond of the way they make you hunt around for the info you need when you're new to this stuff. It's there, but it's not obvious where it's hidden. In any event, read up in these forums (and may I suggest http://linuxquestions.org also, in the networking/wireless forums) for more info and success stories. Since my chip set doesn't require ndiswrapper, I'm not expert by any means with their pages. I only explored it once when I too had a broadcom 4306 chip and was very, very new to all this. I gave up after my 14 day return policy was one day from expiring for the card, and got another that I was able to make work without ndiswrapper, but I found out later that ndiswrapper is much improved since then. There are many others here who will be able to help from this point. Good luck J

ddavisart - Congratulations! You've entered into it as deep as you can get, right off the bat! ;> Well, maybe. First, I have to ask if it's a 802.11 b card, or a 802.11 g card. The b's have native drivers, and they were probably installed for you already, and probably, you only have to configure the lan. If it's a newer 'g' card, then there's work to do! The first step (maybe) is to find out exactly the chipset that you're dealing with on your wireless card (and this part is relatively painless). Bring up a console session and log in as root (You know -- su - then give your password) and then type in the command lspci. This will give you something like half a dozen lines or so about the devices you've got plugged into your PCI bus. One of them will be about your ethernet, the wireless card. Mine reads: 00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc.: Unknown device 001a (rev 01) The important thing here is the four hex-digit number following the "Unknown device" line, 001a in my case (and it'll be different in yours). It also identifies my card as having an Atheros chip set. BTW, if the command lspci came back with "command not found", then either you have not logged in as root (by typing su - and then giving the password) or the pci utilities are not installed (and I don't think that they are by default). If that's the case, then: click on the menu button on the taskbar, select the system->configuration->packaging menu items, and then click on install software. It'll ask you for the root password (again!), and then it'll take nearly forever to make available a list of all the software you can install. You can then search under file-names (I think!) for pci-utils, or for lspci specifically. When it finds it, select it, then click the install button. It'll tell you when it's succeeded and then take forever again to update the list. You can quit the installation app at this point. Try lspci on the console again and see if you get what I said above. Next, type in lspci -n When I do that, I get: 00:00.0 Class 0600: 8086:7190 (rev 03) 00:01.0 Class 0604: 8086:7191 (rev 03) 00:04.0 Class 0601: 8086:7110 (rev 02) 00:04.1 Class 0101: 8086:7111 (rev 01) 00:04.2 Class 0c03: 8086:7112 (rev 01) 00:04.3 Class 0680: 8086:7113 (rev 02) 00:0a.0 Class 0200: 168c:001a (rev 01) 01:00.0 Class 0300: 1002:5144 Notice that the second last line has that same 4 hex digits (001a) following 168c:. Those 8 digits, 168c:001a in my case identify my card and chipset, From here there are a few ways to go. I suggest searching though these forums to find out if anyone has gotten your card with that specific chipset working. It's likely that they have, using ndiswrapper. Essentially, ndiswrapper uses the windows drivers that you have from the installation disk and wraps them in code so that linux will deal. There are other possibilities also. In my case (as with many Atheros chip sets), the MadWiFi project at SourceForge has already created a driver that works wonderfully. We'll worry about installing ndiswrapper or the linux driver later (it's not hard, but I have to admit that the task is imposing at first). For now you'll need to identify what you're dealing with. After that, there are still a few more steps involved, like installing some wifi and network utilities, but don't worry - they're already on your installation disks, just not installed by default. Already, you can see that this is not trivial. But it took me a week of research and asking questions to understand the process. After that, I spent the better part of another week getting the thing to work, because I didn't really understand the ins and outs of networking and the specifics of the router. All of this can (and usually does) make it difficult to get it to work the first time, but once it does, you've really done something. You're no longer a linux nubie. You're several steps ahead of the game if you have your card talking to your router under XP, 'cause already you know it works, and that you're getting a signal. Good luck! J

I'm about to do a fresh install of 2005 LE for the first time. Also, since my last wireless PCI adapter just bit the dust, I'm about to try the D-Link DWL G510 v. B1 card with the Atheros chip set. So far in my reading, I've seen claims that this card works (in other versions of Mandy) both with ndiswrapper and with the MADWifi driver (and I've located recent versions of both). But I'm unable to find, in advance of installing, some details. Can anyone tell me if 2005 LE works with this card 'out of the box'? It seems possible *if* the version of MADWiFi is fairly recent. And can anyone tell me please what version of ndiswrapper comes with the 3-CD download version of 2005LE? Can anyone tell me if either the ndiswrapper-method or the MADWiFi driver is easier, better, or preferred? And a question that I'm sure is purely out of ignorance: I see references all over the place to the device ath0 when I read up on MADWiFi, as oppoosed to, or instead of, wlan0. Huh? I'm guessing that this has something to do with the laptop cards that use the MADWiFi drivers. Is this correct or am I about to get another lesson in humility when I try to get this card working? Thanks! J

Thanks, Arctic. I was thinking along similar lines this morning. But I don't (yet) know the command-line names of the functions, like what might be invoked from mandrakes kicker->system->configuration->kde->install, or the paths to them. I'll hunt, but any clue-brick for this newbie is welcome! Joe

I had 10.1 official running pretty nicely, but wanted to add kdevoper (not provided on the 3 CD version). I thought I had succeeded (and in fact, with that part, I did). But I was surprised to see KDE 3.3 on my desktop. Didn't know I asked for that! Kdevelop works, but any/every time I ask for something that needs root privledge, like updates or administrator (like for adding users) the process starts and then dies without prompting me for the root password. Easy urpmi fails too. Also, I'm not getting icons on the desktop for my cd-rom or mini-cruzer (this may be related). Where can I start to solve this problem? Thanks Joe [moved from Installing Mandrake by spinynorman]

Got it! Thank you, VeeDubb! J

My screen is being locked out after 5 minutes, apparently by default. I'd like to increase that. How do I control the time before the "lock screen' takes affect?

Cage47 - thanks for the updates. Wish I had an answer here, but I'm replying only to say that my experience almost exactly mirrors yours (but I haven't tried to reinstall 10.0 and update to 10.1). Because, like you, I've been been able to get my files off of the mini-cruzer and reboot to get everything back to normal, I haven't spent too much time on it. This problem is an annoyance, however. I haven't been able to access my floppy, either. At first I was convinced that this was a related problem, probably something with fstab. After fiddling with it, I've gotten nowhere. Is your floppy working properly? Does anything is MandrakeLinuxUpdates do anything for us in this regard? Thanks Joe