SuSE 10 and wireless card config problems
 

Hello all.

I am having trouble getting either my Suse 10, Knoppix 5 live CD
or regular knoppix 5 HD install to recognize any of my wireless cards.
I have a USB MA101 Netgear, D-Link 650+ and a Linksys Wireless G
adaptor (WPC54G). I also tried the D-Link using a DSL-N live CD. I've
read a few net entries stating people have gotten these OS vers. to
auto recognize their cards - no problem. I'm relatively new to Linux
and love my desktop install which uses a (wired) NIC card and have had
no problems thus far (2 weeks). I'm getting a bit frustrated, though.
I have read many posts with other's frustrations on getting a wireless
card to work with a linux installed laptop. As for laptops, I've used
an IBM thinpad A31 and a DEll Inspiron 4100 (I think). I have removed
all WEP and ACLS on my Netgear Wireless B router for this testing
period. Still no luck.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance-

Additionally, I downloaded the windows driver and stored it in the /media/hda1 area and used ndiswrapper to point to the *.inf file.

Next, I found Konsole instructions: ndiswrapper -i /{path} /*/inf
A message came back stating driver was loaded already. I tried the modprobe ndiswrapper kommand but it return and error with invalid instruction or something similar.
The most I get is from the Linksys card and it simply has one light showing power. It feels like I'm close...but getting quite frustrated.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

That was a *.inf above... typing error.

I think that the version of ndiswrapper that comes from the SuSE 10.1 rpm package ( program or kernel module package ) has a problem. My laptop has a built-in wireless device. It uses a broadcom controller, as do many linksys devices. I had ndiswrapper working using SuSE 10.0. But after a fresh install to SuSE 10.1, I had the same error. I uninstalled ndiswrapper, and reinstalled it from a source tarball I retrieved from an earlier backup.

Since the source has an ndiswrapper.spec file, I found it convenient to use rpmbuild to build the pair of RPM files.
Here is how I did it:
I downloaded ndiswrapper-1.8.tar.gz previously. If you download a different version, change the version number appropriately.
This will produce a pair of RPM files that you can use "sudo /sbin/yast -i <name>.rpm" to install. Or you can use "rpm -Uhv <name>.rpm". The RPM files are in the /usr/src/packages/RPMS/ directory. Look in the subdirectory that matches your architecture. Mine were in /usr/src/packages/RPMS/x86_64/.

I find it especially convenient doing it this way after a kernel security update. You need a new ndiswrapper.ko module installed in that case, before wireless will work after a reboot. The ndiswrapper-<version>.RPM will be OK, you will just need to install the ndiswrapper-kernel-<version>.rpm package.

Good Luck!

I apologize, I neglected to make clear that those steps I outlined earlier were performed on a new Knoppix 5 Live CD run. Is it still your opinion that I should follow the steps for a new dniswrapper tool? Knoppix 5 was released just a few weeks ago. I just thought I'd post this info to see if it changed anything. Sorry for not including it earlier.

:study:

I though you were referring to the SuSE 10.1 installation. I saw the exact message when trying to modprobe the ndiswrapper.ko module that SuSE supplied. That is why I used my previous version.

It's possible that Knoppix uses the same ndiswrapper version that SuSE does, and this is the common problem.

One other possibility is that you selected the wrong windows driver to use. Go to the ndiswrapper wiki site and see if your device is listed. If it is, download the recommended windows driver.

Remember, that if you have a 64 bit distro, you need to download the 64 bit windows driver.
For a broadcom controller based device, the Linuxant website has a link to a 64 bit windows driver.

I don't have knoppix handy right now. Does the latest version use a 2.6 version kernel or 2.4?

Also, for SuSE, you need to install the kernel-source and kernel-syms packages.