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DWL 510 [solved]


Guest Mike1767
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Question. What is it ???.

When you make a post like this, you assume incorrectly that everyone knows what the heck you are talking about. We can find out by googling but we should not have to do that initially. Then some of us may be able to help you.

 

Okay so now we know that it is a Wireless LAN Pci card for broardband.

Sorry I cannot help you here but I think others probably can.

 

A sincere welcome to MUB, mike 1767.

Cheers. John.

Edited by AussieJohn
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Guest Mike1767

Sorry about that. I assumed that the only ones able to help would be others with the card who would therefore know what it is. I'll try to remember to be more specific if (when) I have more questions. Thanks for the welcome. Mike

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Why, yes, I have. Using it to write to you here, actually ;>

 

I'll outline, briefly, what I did (as I remember it) to get the card working, but please know that I really don't know exactly how to help just yet. There's a difference between someone new to computers and someone new to Linux and someone with a little experience in Linux/Unix and a Guru so please try not to be too frustrated here. The general rule of thumb is: "the most specific questions will get the most direct ansers".

First, some preparation. You need to install pci-utils. If the command lspci (part of pci-utils) returns something like "command not found", then it's not installed by default. Also, you'll need the "gcc" command and "make" command to be available, so if gcc --version and make --version return "command not found", install them too. If you're with me so far...

 

Please verify that you have the same version of the DWL-G510 card that I have. Mine is version B. The way to find out is to start a console session and type the command lspci at the prompt. If one of the lines looks like "00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc.: Unknown device 001a (rev 01)", then we're in business. It's an Atheros chipset. To find the specific driver you need, first notice in that line the four hex digits, "001a (rev 01)". Next, in the consol session type lspci -n and find that same group. For me, it comes out near the end, and the full line reads:

 

00:0a.0 Class 0200: 168c:001a (rev 01)

 

That 168c:001a is the important thing. It's used to identify the driver you'll need. If you find this line (or something real close), we're doing good.

 

If you go to http://madwifi.sourceforge.net/ , you'll see all about the MadWiFi driver for the Atheros chip sets. The page http://madwifi.sourceforge.net/dokuwiki/do...patibility_list will show you if your chipset is compatible with the madwifi driver, and if you really have the same card that I have.

Ok. I'll stop here for now, and let you read the madwifi faq. Basically, you will download their source (as a tar-ball), compile and make and install the driver. It's really almost as simple as that. But damn, it's intimidating the first time.

 

There is an alternative, which is to use ndiswrapper to "wrap" the windows driver you have (it came on the cd with the card) in code so that Linux can deal with it. Plenty of people seem to do well with that approach. But since you have to do the same thing with ndiswrapper that you'll be doing with the madwifi driver, the extra layer seems problamatic to me. Besides, I reallly have to admit, the madwifi driver really works well for me.

 

I had more frustrations with what came *after* all that. You'll fnd that Mandriva doesn't automatically install some network stuff that you'll need either. It's ok - it's there on the installation disks. We'll get to it later.

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Thanks for your response mike. Thing is that some problems are not just specific to a particular brand or piece of hardware and solutions have often been found for similar hardware has been able to fix a problem. Our members come from a vast field of skills and experience and we like to help serve you well the same as we were helped when we started out in LINUX. Maybe a couple are trained gurus but most are ordinary newbies ( yes we stil consider ourselves newbies) just helping oneanother. It is a fantastic organisation to be in. Have fun.

 

John.

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Guest Mike1767

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately it's just the DWL 510 not the G510 :-( From what I've been able to find, it's a Realtek chipset, so I don't think that Madwifi will work for it.

I'll describe the problem with a bit mroe detail reagardless. Using ndiswrapper I can get the card recognized, but I cannot set the essid, channel or mode. I can however set the WEP key. Whenever I try to set the mode, etc. (as root,

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed

) it doesn't give an error, but it also doesn't change the mode from auto to managed. I have no idea why but setting the key does work, but as soon as I try to set one of the others the key is reset to off.

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Mike,

You're obviously way ahead of where I thought you were. Sorry!

I think the way to proceed is to show us the results of ifconfig and iwconfig. Can you set the rate or the channel?

You might try ifconfig wlan0 up followed by iwlist wlan0 scan to see if the card can hear anything.

I'm not too up on ndiswrapper (so I'm afraid I can't help much), but it's possible that a different version will work for you, even if the one given with 2005LE doesn't. Of course, there may be a later one too.

The trick is to find a driver that ndiswrapper can use with your chipset, and it's not always the driver that came with your card. Sometimes you have to dig to find one that works.

Good Luck

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hey mike have you added an "ifcfg-wlan0" file in the directory /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts ? you'll need that if you haven't. i also totally agree on the need for an iwconfig and an ifconfig post.

 

as for the driver, the ndiswrapper folk say to download the proper driver and not use the one on your cd. from experience, i recommend the same. don't know why. i'd grab the newest version of ndiswrapper at ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net and go from there as well. then i'd follow hte instructions on the wiki page verbatim.

 

i have the dwl-650 version m. mine works like a champ considering my router kinda sucks.

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Guest Mike1767

Okay, here are the results of ifconfig and iwconfig respectively.

 

 

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:974 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:974 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
         RX bytes:122673 (119.7 Kb)  TX bytes:122673 (119.7 Kb)

sit0      Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
         inet6 addr: ::127.0.0.1/96 Scope:Unknown
         UP RUNNING 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 00:0D:88:35:A0:12
         inet6 addr: fe80::20d:88ff:fe35:a012/64 Scope:Link
         UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  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:1000
         RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
         Memory:ef00d000-ef00d024

 

 

lo        no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:off/any  Nickname:"Desktop"
         Mode:Auto  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
         Bit Rate=11 Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
         RTS thr=2432 B   Fragment thr=2432 B
         Encryption key:6D69-6B65-7273-7472-6565-7465-72   Security mode:restricted
         Power Management:off
         Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-95 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

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Guest Mike1767

When I scan (iwlist wlan0 scan) it doesn't find anything. ifcfg wlan0 was already existing. Thanks again for the help guys. Going on a hunt for the latest driver and version of ndiswrapper.

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Guest Mike1767

Okay, So i've installed everything as listed on the ndiswrapper site according to my card. I know that the router is broadcasting ESSID (just checked and using it for 3 other systems). So if it doesn't find anything on the scan then it's supposed to be that the card radio is off, which I really don't think is the problem. The card works fine under Windows and the link/act light on the back of it is lit up when in Linux.

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Post here the content of the ifcfg-wlan0 script. The script is normally located in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/. The script contains parameters of the network which you want to connect to, such as ESSID, WEP key (if you use encription), IP address (if static), etc. In fact all parameters which you set using iwconfig, can (and normally should) be setup in that script.

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