help with ndiswrapper

thermg

thermg

thermg

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Hi,

I am trying to install my linksys wireless pci card on Fedora Core 4 using ndiswrapper v1.8. Can anyone please help me with the process as I seem to be going nowhere fast. I know that the card should work as I have looked it up on the ndiswrapper website, but i think that its user error more than anything. I am very new to linux so please try and keep any answers as simple as possible. By the way the card is a linksys wmp54g v2 and I have a copy of the windows drivers from their website. Any hep would be appreciated.

Cheers.
 
Hello,

Can you give a brief outline of what you have tried so far? Have you followed the instructions in the INSTALL file in the NDIS Wrapper package.

Dave
 
Last edited:
Dave77 said:
Hello,

Can you give a brief outline of what you have tried so far? Have you followed the instructions in the INSTALL file in the NDIS Wrapper package.

Dave
Click to expand...


Yeah I have, I'll have to write down what Ive done and post back as its on this pc as dual boot, so dont have access to another one at the same time and my network port is too far from the wireless router. Will get back asap.

Cheers
 
thermg said:
Yeah I have, I'll have to write down what Ive done and post back as its on this pc as dual boot, so dont have access to another one at the same time and my network port is too far from the wireless router. Will get back asap.

Cheers
Click to expand...

on install it told me that the kernal is compiled with 4K stack size. The device ID I have identified as:

05:07.0 Class 0280: 14e4:4320 (rev 03)

I went to the linksys website and grabbed the v2 drivers as that is the version that it says my card is in the documentation (I dont know if this is correct after seeing rev 03 above?).

The ndiswrapper folder is in the location:
/home/ross/Desktop/ndiswrapper-1.8

I have copied the files:
bcm43xx.cat;
bcmwl5.inf; and
bcmwl5.sys

to the driver folder located in the ndiswrapper folder:
/home/ross/Desktop/ndiswrapper-1.8/driver

To install the driver i run from terminal as root:
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

It returns:
couldn't copy bcmwl5.inf at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 135

If i list the driver installed, it returns with:
autorun invalid driver!
bcmwl5 invalid driver!

Do I have the windows drivers in the wrong place?
Or could it be due to the stack size? How can I tell if this is the problem?
Or could it be that I need the v3 drivers instead of the version 2?

Please help!

Cheers
 
Having just looked for your PCI ID on the ndiswrapper driver list:

PCI ID 14e4:4320

Laptop: Acer Aspire 1511 LMi and Acer Aspire 1501 LMi

* Chipset: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11g (rev 3)
* pciid: 14e4:4320 (rev 3)
* Driver: [ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_1500/drivers/80211g.zip] from [[9]]
* Other: (using ndiswrapper 0.10-1 from debian repository) drivers from ndiswrapper card list didn't work (everything seemed to be fine, but no networks were found). same problem as reported here (with a HP nx9105): [[10]]
Click to expand...

Possible that Linksys have been chopping and changing their wireless chipsets (both of these are actually Broadcomm chipsets). Give that driver from the Acer website a crack and let me know how you get on :)

(p.s. I ended up having a long, protracted email discussion at work with a student getting the other incarnation of this card working under linux, so if you get stuck again I can have a look through my inbox and see if I can find any other nuggets of useful information)
 
M0KUJ1N said:
Having just looked for your PCI ID on the ndiswrapper driver list:

PCI ID 14e4:4320



Possible that Linksys have been chopping and changing their wireless chipsets (both of these are actually Broadcomm chipsets). Give that driver from the Acer website a crack and let me know how you get on :)

(p.s. I ended up having a long, protracted email discussion at work with a student getting the other incarnation of this card working under linux, so if you get stuck again I can have a look through my inbox and see if I can find any other nuggets of useful information)
Click to expand...

Still no joy with the above file.

Upon install it returns te following in the terminal:
couldn't copy bcmwl5.inf at usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 135.

To anyone:
Do I have the driver files in the right place? Where should they be located?

Cheers in advance
 
When you run ndiswrapper -i it copies your inf file to /etc/ndiswrapper. However it's breaking before it can do that. This is perhaps a rather silly question but are you running ndiswrapper -i as root? I would be surprised if your standard user account has write access to /etc/ndiswrapper :)
 
Yes, I am logged into the root user account. The install of the program went fine as root, its just installing the drivers that it doesnt seem to want to play along. Could this be because the drivers are bigger than the 4K stack and that doesnt agree with the kernel?
 
M0KUJ1N said:
When you run ndiswrapper -i it copies your inf file to /etc/ndiswrapper. However it's breaking before it can do that. This is perhaps a rather silly question but are you running ndiswrapper -i as root? I would be surprised if your standard user account has write access to /etc/ndiswrapper :)
Click to expand...

Could I not just copy and paste the inf file into the /etc/ndiswrapper folder and save the hassle of having to do it in the terminal? Or does it have to be done this way to install the inf file correctly?
 
Fraid not, IIRC it also makes changes to the config files so best doing it in the documented way. Are you using tab to complete the filename (just to eliminate any typos), and just to be sure, do a chmod a+rx on the inf file, as the "cannot copy" error definitely suggests a permissions problem somewhere
 
M0KUJ1N said:
Fraid not, IIRC it also makes changes to the config files so best doing it in the documented way. Are you using tab to complete the filename (just to eliminate any typos), and just to be sure, do a chmod a+rx on the inf file, as the "cannot copy" error definitely suggests a permissions problem somewhere
Click to expand...

How does pressing tab complete the file name? I have been typing it in manually. To do the chmod do i type chmod a+rx bcmwl5.inf? Do i need to change to the directory where the file is located, through using the terminal?

Cheers :)
 
OK, if you type in the first letter or two of a file, and hit tab, if there are no other files which begin with those letters, hitting tab will complete the filename for you. If there are several files which begin with those letters, hitting tab repeatedly will cycle through them. Yes you will need to change to the directory the file is located in, or use the full path. Incidentally you can also use tab when on directories, e.g. /h<tab> gives you home;r<tab> gives you /home/ross etc etc.
 
M0KUJ1N said:
OK, if you type in the first letter or two of a file, and hit tab, if there are no other files which begin with those letters, hitting tab will complete the filename for you. If there are several files which begin with those letters, hitting tab repeatedly will cycle through them. Yes you will need to change to the directory the file is located in, or use the full path. Incidentally you can also use tab when on directories, e.g. /h<tab> gives you home;r<tab> gives you /home/ross etc etc.
Click to expand...

Hi, sorry for the slow reply. Ok i have tried the chmod method and no error messages were returned while using the root account. This is the terminal data:

[root@localhost ~]# cd /home/ross/Desktop/ndiswrapper-1.8/driver/
[root@localhost ~]# chmod a+rx bcmwl5.inf
[root@localhost ~]#


The top line is the folder where the .inf file is located along with all the ndiswrapper setup files etc. Any sugesstions where I go from here to get the file installed?

Cheers
 
Can anybody else help me with this problem that I am having with ndiswrapper? PLEASE!? Its driving me nuts!!
 
I have a feeling it could do with the 4k kernel stack size. I've heard of problems with using less than an 8k stack size. To fix this would be a kernel recompile from source, however I'm not sure where in the kernel config you'd change the option. All I can remember is that there was a section in my Ubuntu config about ndiswrapper, but I dunno if it affects the stack size if selected.
 
Dunky said:
I have a feeling it could do with the 4k kernel stack size. I've heard of problems with using less than an 8k stack size. To fix this would be a kernel recompile from source, however I'm not sure where in the kernel config you'd change the option. All I can remember is that there was a section in my Ubuntu config about ndiswrapper, but I dunno if it affects the stack size if selected.
Click to expand...

Yeah, i think if the windows drivers arnt quite right i might need to change the stack size to 16K or something like that. No idea how to go about it though! Oh, well if it all goes wrong i can re-install it all again i guess!
 
In Windows, the kernel stack is usually quite a bit bigger than 4K (not sure, but I guess about 16K) and as you said, because these are Windows drivers and we can't change them, it's something that Ndiswrapper can't get around. However there is talk of 2.6.16 kernel using 4K stacks only which makes me think why is your kernel using 4K when the default is probably higher (probably a SuSE patch). More info: http://lwn.net/Articles/160138/

EDIT: Native driver for your chipset: http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/
 
I think that my kernel is 2.6.16, not sure on that though, would have to check. Will have a read of those articles though. Cheers for the help.
 
2.6.16 is still in RC stage (RC5 IIRC) so I doubt it, most likely 2.6.15 (although you can check by going to console and typing: uname -r). The native driver is still not fully supported but looks a pain in the rear to install as it involves two kernel patches and then a kernel recompile.
 
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