Dell Wireless Card isn't working
 

Warning: :newbie:

I have a Dell Inspiron 1150, with a Dell Wireless WLAN 1350 WLAN Mini-PCI Card. I'm running Fedora Core 2.

My issue is that the wireless card isn't being recognized. It is seen on my windows partition, but I don't particularly like windows.

As I am somewhat new with Linux, any detailed help would be greatly appreciated.

The card is based on a Broadcom chip that is not supported directly by anything in Linux because Broadcom won't write a Linux driver or release enough info for the Open Source community to do it themselves. So..... you need to look around at http://www.linuxant.com to buy a "driver loader" that lets you use your Windows driver inside Linux, or the same kind of thing in Open Source at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net

I have had great success with the NDISwrapper and the Dell Truemobile line of NICS, once you get the hang of it you can just do about any WLAN card. Works great with FC2 as i have seen.

Now, I apologize for being retarded, but how do I install this (NDISwrapper), and does the FC1 version work on FC2?

Looks to me like the NDISwrapper packages are built for each particular kernel, and I don't see much very current there. First thing you need to do is run the command

uname -a

To get your kernel version, and then go look for it on the list. If they have the right kernel, I don't think it will matter that it is from FC1. And if they have the one you need, you will download the rpm package (it is like a Windows setup.exe file) and we can walk you through installing it. If they don't have it, you will need to build your own from the sources. That is jumping in a little deep but you probably want the full Linux experience sooner or later, right? Post back and let us know if that is the way you need to go too.

I have the 2.6.5 Kernel

I think they only have them listed up to 2.4.22. I'm going to do a little looking for you. I'll be back in a bit.......

Thanks, I appreciate it. I'm off to work in about an hour, so theres no rush or anything. I just need to have this all set before August 21, when I'm off to school (WPI).

I don't see any packages pre-built for Fedora kernels beyond 2.4.22. And this is why:

"If you are using 2.6 kernels, make sure 4K stacks are not used (i.e., disable CONFIG_4KSTACKS)." (...from the NDISwrapper FAQ)

The Fedora Core 2 kernels are all built with 4k stacks locked in. You can't even rebuild them with the option changed. So, you will need to either build your own kernel from source from kernel.org or use one of the ones (free) that Linuxant has on their site to work with their packages at

http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader...ernel-i686.php

And then, you will need to build NDISwrapper from source, after you have a suitable kernel in place.

I'm game to try to help you along on this, but I'd sugget you let this sit a day in case someone posts an easier way to go about this.

Quick Warning about Linuxant
 

I tried linuxant first on my Dell Inspiron 1000, Truemobile 1300 card, Slackware 10, 2.4.26 kernel. It caused my system to crash periodically (once every couple hours). Other Dell users have told me of similar experiences. Ndiswrapper works great, though.

Brian

so, what version of Ndiswrapper should I use, how do I set it up, etc?

Also, how does it work? Will I be able to have as much control over it as I would any other wireless card that did have linux support?

You are starting on a big project here, so one step at a time, ok? First thing you need is a kernel that supports more than the 4k stacks that the stock Fedora one you are now running does. You can get a 2.6.6 kernel from Linuxant, for free, nothing to do directly with them, they are just nice and made it to help people, it will be fine with NDISwrapper, etc. etc. It is the same as a slightly more recent Fedora kernel than you have, with pretty much just the stack size changed.

You need to get the file on your Linux system and unzipped. I think you can unzip in Linux, or you can download it and then unzip it in Windows, and then get it to your Linux partition. Are you able to do that? If not, I can unzip it for you and put it on my server and you can download the unzipped file directly when you are in Linux. One way or another, once you have it, we will go through installing it.

I've already recompiled my current kernel with NTFS support (via some instuctions I found online), so the whole unzipping process is no problem. I'm a linux newb, but other than that I'm decent with computers.

Unfortunetly, I'm still on the almighty dial up for a week and a half, so although its finished downloading, I have to work in the morning so I'll be back on tomarrow night.

Good deal! The package you are getting is going to have NTFS turned off again, though. So after you get this new kernel package installed, you are also going to need to do just what you did before to recompile the new kernel with NTFS support, assuming you do want it again. You'll need the corresponding kernel-sourcecode file (big download...):

http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader...noarch.rpm.zip

When you install the rpm for the kernel itself that you just downloaded (use the command rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.6-1.435.....I think), it should set you up with both the old kernel still bootable and the new one. That also should have happened when you recompiled, if you used a different sub-number or it added "custom" when you built your NTFS kernel.

If you've gone through that whole process, you really don't need much help here. It will be the same idea. You will get the most recent NDISwrapper source package and inside it will be a file that will tell you exactly what to do to build it for your new kernel. Instead of doing "make" for the kernel, it might be ./configure and then ./build. That kind of thing. Same idea though. As long as you have the right libraries on your machine, and the kernel sourcecode, it will do it's own thing when you run the scripts the source package instructions tell you to run.

Catch you tomorrow.

So, to install the kernel all I have to do is that one command (rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.6-1.435)? This will set it up for my laptop and everything?

See, installing things on Linux is one of those things I'm not yet used to.