Wireless PCMCIA Card D-Link 650 Not Working on openSUSE 10.2

iceclimber · 08-23-2007, 05:12 PM

Hi there,

I'm using openSUSE 10.2 with a 2.6.18.2-34 kernel on an AMD Athlon machine. My problem: I'm a linux newbie and I'm trying to get the wireless network card D-Link DWL 650 PCMCIA going on my laptop. I have the pcmciautils package installed, as well as ndiswrapper. I'm logged in as root user.

Linux doesn't recognize the card by itself when I plug it in. It appears in the /sys/bus/pcmcia/devices/1.0 directory, but nothing else happens.

ifconfig gives me the following output:

Code:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:3F:B8:57:4A
          inet addr:172.16.26.243  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::202:3fff:feb8:574a/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:97106 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:5033 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:13281643 (12.6 Mb)  TX bytes:735662 (718.4 Kb)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x4800

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:130 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:130 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:8476 (8.2 Kb)  TX bytes:8476 (8.2 Kb)

I tried it three ways but no success. Here is what I did:

1) ndiswrapper
Trying to install the D-Link Windows XP driver for the WiFi card, ndiswrapper says "invalid driver!" If I try to load the module nevertheless via

Code:

modprobe ndiswrapper

, the output is

Code:

FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found.

How could this happen? I'm sure ndiswrapper is installed properly, how can the module be missing?

2) linux-wlan-ng-0.2.8
Installing linux-wlan was not a problem. But after installation the README tells me to restart pcmcia with the command

Code:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart

. In fact, I don't have a pcmcia file in this location on my computer. There is a pcmcia file in /etc/sysconfig and in /usr/lib/scpm/resource_groups. But trying to restart them (/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia restart) the shell output is

Code:

bash: /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia: Permission denied

. So this obviously doesn't work. Is there a reason why I don't have the pcmcia thing where it should be?

As an alternative method for restarting pcmcia, the openSUSE wiki says I should use this command: rcpcmcia restart. Trying it, the output is

Code:

bash: rcpcmcia: command not found

(trying /sbin/rcpcmcia --> same problem). How can the rcpcmcia command be missing on my computer? Where could I get it? Is something wrong with my kernel?

3) cardctl ident
I hoped to get some information on my card with the cardctl command. Trying it, the shell tells me

Code:

bash: cardctl: command not found

. What package or the like do I have to install to get this thing running? What am I doing wrong?

Any help would be highly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!
Clemens

maroonbaboon · 08-23-2007, 06:26 PM

I'm not very familiar with either the hardware or with OpenSuSE. But the DWL-650 is notorious for having several completely different versions under similar names. Here's a guide:

http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.asp?prod_id=357

So probably you should first try and confirm exactly which version you have.

Brian1 · 08-23-2007, 06:57 PM

Check out the HCL section here at the top and to the right. It list it plus some varitions of the name.

Brian

iceclimber · 08-26-2007, 03:39 AM

Thank you for your help so far. Would you also have an idea on why the rcpcmcia and cardctl commands do not exist on my computer?

Why does the shell simply say "command not found"?

Thank you!

maroonbaboon · 08-26-2007, 04:17 AM

On my Debian system cardctl is part of the 'pcmcia-cs' package, so maybe you just need to install a package.

Alternatively cardctl may not be in your PATH. On my system it's located at /sbin/cardctl. It's possible you need to give the full pathname.

mi6 · 09-09-2007, 05:07 PM

cardctl in SuSE 10.2 is pccardctl.