Motorola WN825G Ndiswrapper Slackware-10 Mini-How-to

hanzerik · 10-27-2004, 10:49 PM

I am just doing this because I have had issues with different cards and getting them to work. This worked great with this specific card on Slackware 10, so I thought I would share what I did and hopefully help someone else.

Card: Motorola WN825G
Distro: Slackware 10
Home network setup:
SMC wireless/wired router
Static IP addressing on the lan side

Download ndiswrapper: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/
WN825G Drivers(bcmw15.inf): From install cd or from a windows install

Untar it:
tar xzvf ndiswrapper-0.11.tar.gz

Change to ndiswrapper directory:
cd ndiswrapper-0.11

Build and install the module:
make install

Install the windows driver:
ndiswrapper -i </path/to/inf/file> (For the WN825G the inf is: bcmw15.inf)

Check to make sure drivers are installed:
ndiswrapper -l

Now to test it out. I use static IP's on my lan so your settings may be different if you use dhcp to hand out IP's. I also use WEP for security.

modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 key restricted <mykey>
iwconfig wlan0 essid HANZ
iwconfig wlan0 channel 11
ifconfig wlan0 up
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.135
route add default gw 192.168.1.1
ping www.yahoo.com -c 1

If it works then save the ndiswrapper settings:
ndiswrapper -m

This adds a line to /etc/modules.conf but didn't seem to load the module on boot.

To get the ndiswrapper module loaded at start I edited /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

type: echo "modprobe ndiswrapper" >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local

This will load the module at boot then all you have to do is create a bash script with the settings above to get the connection up. I tried putting the commands in rc.local but I was getting errors so I just made a shell script to setup the card.

Your settings will be different, but hopefully this will help someone else out setting up this card.

Ju Deddo Koinu · 10-28-2004, 02:22 PM

Card: Motorola WN825G
Dist: RedHat 9
Puter: HP Pavilion ze4805
W-Router: Blitzz 802.11g

Someone from IRC told me to download a program called driverloader from linuxant. in order to get this wireless card to work. I did so, but frowned upon the 30 day trial period. After installing driverloader, it turned on my wireless card's power light, but no matter what settings I tried, it would not locate my access point. I gave up and did a 'make uninstall' on driverloader.

I came across this post today, and I thought it would help me out in getting my wireless card to work. I didn't get very far before I encountered some roadblocks... I have the bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys from the windows setup cd that came with my wireless card. I also downloaded ndiswrapper-0.11 from the ndiswrapper site.

I 'tar zxvf ndiswrapper-0.11.tar.gz' and then go to the created directory, do a 'make install', and get ready to go. The first thing I do is run a 'ndiswrapper -l', just to see what's listed:

Code:

[root@koinu ndiswrapper-0.11]# ndiswrapper -l
Unknown line at line 58
Unknown line at line 2296
Unknown line at line 2297
Unknown line at line 2298
...
Unknown line at line 2335
No drivers installed

Well, that's good - there's nothing listed, but there shouldn't be at this point, anyway. Next step:

Code:

[root@koinu wlan]# ndiswrapper -i /root/wlan/bcmwl5.inf
Installing bcmwl5
Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected end of string) at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper li
ne 1093, <INF> line 1.
...............
Malformed UTF-8 character (overflow at 0xb672234a, byte 0x00, after start byte 0
xff) in substitution (s///) at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 1096, <INF> line 3043.
Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected end of string) at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper li
ne 1096, <INF> line 3124
........
Malformed UTF-8 character (overflow at 0xf09f0f30, byte 0xc8, after start byte 0
xff) in substitution (s///) at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 1096, <INF> line 14390
.
Malformed UTF-8 character (overflow at 0x8d280c08, byte 0x30, after start byte 0
xff) in substitution (s///) at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 1096, <INF> line 14390
.........
Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected end of string) at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper li
ne 1096, <INF> line 23399.

(I used elipses to remove redundant code - they say the same thing but with a different line numer)
I'm not sure what all those Malfored UTF-8 warnings or errors are showing up for. driverloader didn't have a problem using the same bcmwl.inf to install with. Well, let's see what ndiswrapper is telling us:

Code:

[root@koinu wlan]# ndiswrapper -l
Unknown line at line 58
Unknown line at line 2296
Unknown line at line 2297
.....
Unknown line at line 2335
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5  driver present, hardware present

Well, it's listed as installed, and it appears to be good....

Code:

[root@koinu wlan]# modprobe ndiswrapper
/lib/modules/2.4.20-6/misc/ndiswrapper.o: unresolved symbol usb_wrap_funcs
/lib/modules/2.4.20-6/misc/ndiswrapper.o: unresolved symbol usb_reset_port
/lib/modules/2.4.20-6/misc/ndiswrapper.o: unresolved symbol usb_submit_nt_urb
/lib/modules/2.4.20-6/misc/ndiswrapper.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-6/misc/ndiswrapper.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-6/misc/ndiswrapper.o: insmod ndiswrapper failed

insmod failed to install it? hmm...

Code:

[root@koinu wlan]# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
 
eth0      no wireless extensions.
 
[root@koinu wlan]# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0F:20:20:8C:57
          inet addr:192.168.0.2  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:530 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:589 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:279361 (272.8 Kb)  TX bytes:75750 (73.9 Kb)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x4000
 
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:16170 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:16170 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:1103695 (1.0 Mb)  TX bytes:1103695 (1.0 Mb)
 
[root@koinu wlan]#

Neither ifconfig or iwconfig list the wireless device. eth0 is my RJ-45 port.

Any suggestions for what I need to look into to get this setup up and running? I'm tired of my laptop having a cat-5 cable hanging out the back.

Kemo · 01-28-2005, 04:19 PM

I can't seem to get it working either

levl6 · 02-24-2005, 12:18 PM

hey guys i had the same problem on my system but i got it to work using the bcmw15a.inf and the card comes up fine but i had problems connecting to anything outside my router any ideas?

AMD Athlon XP 2.3
256ram
40G HDD
motorola WN825g
SUSE 9.1 personal