laiback Posted August 29, 2006 Report Share Posted August 29, 2006 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] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted August 29, 2006 Report Share Posted August 29, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted August 29, 2006 Report Share Posted August 29, 2006 I'm not familiar with this method. Are you using ndiswrapper? I've never used this step. I couldn't find the post you mentioned this from either :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laiback Posted August 29, 2006 Author Report Share Posted August 29, 2006 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted August 29, 2006 Report Share Posted August 29, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laiback Posted August 29, 2006 Author Report Share Posted August 29, 2006 (edited) 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 August 29, 2006 by laiback Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted August 29, 2006 Report Share Posted August 29, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted August 31, 2006 Report Share Posted August 31, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laiback Posted August 31, 2006 Author Report Share Posted August 31, 2006 (edited) 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 August 31, 2006 by laiback Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted August 31, 2006 Report Share Posted August 31, 2006 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 ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted August 31, 2006 Report Share Posted August 31, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted August 31, 2006 Report Share Posted August 31, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laiback Posted August 31, 2006 Author Report Share Posted August 31, 2006 (edited) 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 August 31, 2006 by laiback Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted August 31, 2006 Report Share Posted August 31, 2006 The Mandriva rpm will work just fine. There is really no need to compile a version. Just be sure it is installed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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