Connecting to Lan with Mandrake & my wireless card

[Guest ddavisart]

hey guys, I just installed mandrake. Its my first time using any linux software. I have both xp and mandrake on my system. We have a cable modem in another room that I usually connect to with my wireless card. I cant seem to configure a network for my wireless card and get connected. I have a motorola card and a motorola modem. I dont think theres linux drivers for them since I havent been able to find any yet. Since im new to this all, can anyone help me out and point me to the right direction?

[jbuckley2004]

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

[Guest ddavisart]

Hey thanks so much. I ran that command and my card shows up as broadcom corp bcm4306 802 11b/g . I tried to use ndiswrapper and install my driver from my disk, but after I install the driver, and I check to list the driver i get a message for that driver that says INVALID DRIVER. Any ideas, thanks again for the help

[jbuckley2004]

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

[Guest ddavisart]

Hey J , Thanks so much for the help. Turns out you guessed my card right. It is the 14e4:4320 card. And I found the driver for it on the website for the motorola card I have. Only thing is I cant get the new ndiswrapper installed. I get a error message each time I run the install that says the kernal path is invalid. and then I went and followed the path to it and I see a build but the size of the build file is 0KB. So Now I dont really know what to do. Im trying to read threw sites,but like you said, to someone new to all of this its very hard and confusing. I got frustrated and just turned off my computer. I will try again today. Any tips you can give me personally for installing this? thanks again for the help. You are the only person thats even responded back to me on any forum.

[Qchem]

Hi,

 

Welcome to the board!

 

Have you installed the kernel-source package for your current kernel? If not you can install it using urpmi.

[jbuckley2004]

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! ;>

[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