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loadndisdriver


laiback
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I'm looking at past threads to get some info to help a friend configure a wireless router/modem for Mandriva 2006 free distribution.

Member beesea (Jun 4 2006 under Tips & Tricks) refers to :-

 

# loadndisdriver --help

 

I've tried this command on my machine and get nothing. MCC Software Media Manager doesn't list anything under loadndis either.

 

Can anyone shed any further light on this.

 

(I'm needing to install a D-link DWL G510 which doesn't appear in the approved list unfortunately)

 

Many thanks.

 

Laidback

 

 

[moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

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First, you must create the device and then you must load the drivers, or activate the device. It is a 2 step process, and all of it can be done from the MCC.

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Wow that was quick.

 

ianw1974

It's in General>Tips and Tricks then I searched for wireless. The topic title is How I got Wireless working with ndiswrapper. I think the id is 14972.

 

I don't mind what I use really. I was looking at ndiswrapper as this was successful for beesea.

However you gentlemen may well know better.

 

IXthusdan

I'm very encouraged by your suggestion. I looked in MCC at the beginning and took fright (I'm a newbie). I couldn't really see how to proceed as I didn't understand what ndiswrapper did (it's mentioned as an option in MCC at some point). A driver for the D-link DWL G510 wasn't listed. So I started to search on the net.

 

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

 

So far I've read some frightning suggestions that I have to load the kernel-source and then make distclean, make &

make install to compile and install the kernel module and the userspace utilities. Looks to me as if I'm likely to fall at the first hurdle.

 

Many thanks

 

Laidback

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First, look in harddrake and see how the device is identified. Being a D Link does not mean it is a D Link chip. The actual chip determines the device driver. It may be linux native (probably not) or it may be you will borrow the windows driver via ndisdwrapper. Please tell me more about your system.

 

I see it may be an Atheros chip.

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First, look in harddrake and see how the device is identified. Being a D Link does not mean it is a D Link chip. The actual chip determines the device driver. It may be linux native (probably not) or it may be you will borrow the windows driver via ndisdwrapper. Please tell me more about your system.

 

I see it may be an Atheros chip.

Thankyou for this. I'm visiting my friend tomorrow so will get the chip info. then.

I've also read about lspci and lspci -n so believe that I'll be on the right track there re identifying the chip and hence driver needed.

 

Will respond again soon.

 

Thanks

 

PS found this on the web, any help?

 

D-Link DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Adapter, 802.11g, 54 Mbps

It's good. I bought it's for my linux machine(Atheros). It works with ndiswrapper module and madwifi drivers(but no support from D-Link). I would like to see native support from the vendors or at least publish the internals so others can write proper drivers for these cards. Buy a card which is natively supported by linux if possible.

Edited by laiback
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Plan on using ndiswrapper. This means that if you are dual booting, simply copy the file from windows into linux, somewhere. Then when you configure the card, you will need to know the location to tell linux where to find the driver. I have a Broadcom device, which is generally poor quality, but works just fine on my laptop via ndiswrapper. I believe Atheros chips are considered better than broadcom based stuff.

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I have an Atheros chip on my minipci card in my Toshiba laptop and I use ndiswrapper. Works a treat. I used MCC to get the most of it configured, but it doesn't remember everything on boot.

 

The main things to do are:

 

ndiswrapper -i filename.inf

 

to get the driver installed. Follow the ndiswrapper wiki, google for it, and continue following this document from the ndiswrapper -i since you don't need to compile, but do:

 

urpmi ndiswrapper

 

to get it installed, unless it's already installed.

 

Oh, and make sure you add this to /etc/modprobe.preload:

 

alias ath0 ndiswrapper

 

of course, make sure your system is recognising your device as ath0, or wlan0 and substitute ath0 with the correct value. On mine it's ath0.

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I have some more info :-

Harddrake says

 

Vendor (null)

Media class Network-other

Bus PCI

Vendor id 6164

Device id 770

Sub vendor id 4486

Sub device id 15369

 

lspci yielded 00:0b.0 Network controller: Relink: unknown device 0302

lspci -n yielded 00:0b.0 class 0286: 1814:0302

(I've only listed the cross reference lines)

 

I did try to get things working through MCC yesterday. I copied the Windows drivers into a dir as suggested but whenever I tried to configure a new network connection the PC locked after I pressed Apply. I have checked that Ndiswrapper is installed. Only the master reboot button would get me out of the problem.

 

Reading ianw1974's comments I'm sure I need to go to the command line to sort this out, as per his example.

It'll be a few days now before I go back to visit my friend but many thanks for your help so far. I'll follow ianw1974's line then.

 

Since this is a dual booting machine (XP, Linux) would I be right in thinking that the IP address within both systems needs to be the same?, it is the same card after all.

 

I've also found a helpful comment in Linux Format Christmas 2005 which refers to ndismonitor from sourceforge. I'll have a look at that too.

 

Bye for now, but I will respond further.

Edited by laiback
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It doesn't have to be the same, but I tend to keep them the same on dual boot systems when using static IP addresses. Just easier for continuity. I tie the IP address to the machine, rather than the operating system ;)

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The ip address is only important if you are assigning an ip rather than using dhcp. If you are assigning an ip, then by all means use the same, since it is a hardware address rather than an os that devices look for.

 

When you configure the card, you will need to know the security of the wireless router. Many times it is good to turn the security off, make the connection, turn the security back on and then apply the appropriate details to the connection.

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And if you do want security, I recommend using wpa_supplicant and WPA-PSK on the wireless router/switch/access point.

 

I have a basic config for wpa which works, but you cannot use the Mandriva gui for it. It always "forgets" the config. If you do decide to use this, post back, and I'll put the config here.

 

And as ix says, test without security then turn it on after that.

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Thank you for your thoughts gentlemen. I'll certainly give your ideas a try as soon as I can.

 

For ref#

I believe that loadndisdriver is a C program that comes with the rpm version of ndiswrapper. I have downloaded the net version of ndiswrapper from sourceforge and see a file of that name within the downloaded directories.

 

Thanks again.

 

Laidback

Edited by laiback
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