Wireless Drivers
 

Today in Ubuntu I went to:
Admin> Windows Wireless Drivers>
A window opened and gave me the option to Install New Driver; when I clicked and highlighted the driver I wanted an additional window opened and said;
" Not a valid driver .inf file"

What is a .inf file?

How would I find where this file is at to retrieve?
I'm :scratch:

An inf file is a text file which is used to install/define parameters for Windows devices. In this case, a wireless device.

Most wireless devices tend to work under Linux these days. Much better than it used to be anyway. If you can't get your wireless to work, type this in a console:
Post your results here. If you can't get wireless working, we can help.

An INF file(Setup Information file), is a plain text file used by Windows for installation of software and drivers. INF files are most commonly used for installation of device drivers for hardware components.


Ubuntu supports a system known as NDISWrapper. This allows you to use a Windows wireless device driver under Ubuntu.

Now do one thing ---

First obtain the Windows Driver for your system and locate the file that ends with .inf.

Install ndisgtk (System → Administration → Synaptic Package Manager).

Open ndisgtk (System → Administration → Windows Wireless Drivers).

Select Install new driver.

Choose the location of your Windows .inf file and click Install.

Click OK.

And finally you are done...

Ok, have to go to my Linux/Ubuntu side. Be back in a few minutes.

Terminal results from sudo lspci:
 

cat@ztcat:~$ sudo lspci
[sudo] password for cat:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (int gfx)
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1)
00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [IDE mode]
00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 3a)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 IDE Controller
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:14.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI2 Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] HyperTransport Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64, Sempron] Link Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon 3100 Graphics
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02)

The Windows driver is on my Windows XP in my dowloads folder.
How do I get that driver from XP when I am on the Linux side?

Well, in Ubuntu you can access Windows partition directly or if not you can first mount that Windows partition.

So, as I mentioned above when you'll install just give the path of that file and it will take that .inf file from there.

Hi,

two things:

1. Unless you are in a very unusual situation you should not be using windows drivers on your linux system.
2. I may be going blind, but I can not see a wireless device listed in the output of lspci. Do you know what sort of wireless device you have?

Evo2.

That's correct evo2, that's what I was thinking that no output of wireless devices was listed in lspci output.

If it's a usb wireless adaptor, type sudo lsusb instead.

I have a Wireless Adapter by: Linksys a WUSB54GC that is picking up the signal from down the hall where my modem is.

A Linksys Adapter usb WUSB54GC

Not sure if I am in a unusual situation or not but I do know that I have been able to connect to the internet on the Windows side but have not been able to get my Linux/Ubuntu 10.04 : Ultimate Edition2.7 side on line.

That usb wireless adaptor should work in linux. First, check dmesg to see if there are any messages about missing firmware. I think *Ubuntu usually includes firmware, but it can't hurt to double check. Also, it wouldn't hurt to check lsmod to see if the rt73 module is loading.

This should reveal info about what is going on during initialization. If you have ethernet support, use it to connect and search the repos for rt73. You might even have better luck compiling the driver manually. The source file should be in the repos. However, I can't check myself since I use Gentoo.

Thank You
I will try exactly as you have advised, I'll go type in those commands and post the results.
It is my sincere hope that something works soon. I have been trying for 6 weeks now to get my Ubuntu online.

There are a bunch of pages on the web about getting this device to work with ubuntu.
Try:

http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+WUSB54GC+howto

HTH,

Evo2.