This tut is for both seasons linux kids and newbs. I myself am a newb and I'm doing the best I can to share what I've learned with the rest of you who may be looking for the same answers. I hope this helps someone else.


K, To be clear the 7510GX comes with a Broadcom 4318 chipset dubbed "AirForce One" Ghey, I know. And this tut is for SuSE 10.0 64 bit running 2.6.13-15 Kernel. Anyway, you'll want to use the lastest 64 bit driver(you 32 bit kids are out of luck as I have yet to mess with 32 bit linux on this machine so i don't know, this may or may not work for you.). With either ndiswrapper or driverloader you have to use the 64 bit binaries of the windows drivers. For 64 bit you're only going to need the bcmwl5.inf and the bcmwl568.sys or some shit... it's not like the others, anyway. Just download the latest 64 bit driver from my site, so I know you can get to them. http://www.dev-hack.com/wifi64.zip

once you get them on your linux box extract them wherever you want.

First things first. Login as or su to root, you're gonna need it. If you get compile errors, chances are you're not root. I've had little success with ndiswrapper on suse 10-64, it worked fine on FC4 and may work with this method that I use for initializing the card manually in the proper order. You do this wrong and it really does a number on your kernal(machine won't boot again normally, have to safemode it and manually remove the module). I used Linuxant driverloader, but for me it's been worth the 20 bucks because it really is worry free it takes care of linking your modules with your kernal source directory in case you didn't already.

But.. before you start compiling anything, run this command(remember su root first)

If it says the file already exists then it's already done and we can move on, if it says nothing, then you've just done it and we can move on. HINT: use the <tab> key to help guess the directory structure since everyone's flavor is different.

Next thing is next. If you have wired access with your lappy(And in Suse 10 it should already be setup, just have to ifup eth0, etc) then you can get the latest cvs of ndiswrapper which I've heard good things about and have used in FC4(successfully, I might add).

or download the source tarball on http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net

That will get you the latest distro and dump it into a directory called "ndiswrapper".

First thing is now first for ndiswrapper, uninstall any version you might have on your machine at the moment simply use "make uninstall" to remove the old version, it should suffice in successfully removing the old version and the source as well.

Now type the following commands:

This clears out all variables that may or maynot have been in use as well as clears any temp files for compiling.

This compiles the program.

This installs the module

ndiswrapper should now be installed but not active, not yet... now type:

..to check for any other dendencies.

Then go ahead and modprobe ndiswrapper

now change to the dir where you extracted your 7510gx 64-bit wifi drivers.

type the following commands:

You should get one or two warnings about something being forced to mode 2 or some shit, it's irrelavent. As long as it doesn't say that the the hardware isn't there or the driver doesn't work... etc.

next, next, You should get the driver that's installed and it should say, "Driver Present, Hardware Present". Now, if you've followed the install wiki you're probably confused by now(my reports indicate the wiki steps works great for 32 bit SuSE, please keep that in mind.)
You're confused because the little wifi light isn't on. There's a reason for that that I'll get into later.

k, next if you have the wifi toolkit installed(comes with SuSE 10) then type iwconfig and see if wlan0 is there. It should be if it works. -=-OR-=- you'll see eth0 with wifi extensions. Don't as me why but with FC4 and sometimes SuSE it will make the wifi card eth0 instead of wlan0.

Now if you don't see anything that has wifi extensions on it don't panic. we're only half done. (but it's not looking too great from here).

Try hitting Function F2 on your machine(the wifi hard switch) if THIS doesn't turn on the light, then it's time to move on to something else. That's just about all I can say, kids... Lemme splain... Ndiswrapper does a great job of utilizing NDIS standards in windows drivers, however... with our laptops it's not a problem with ndiswrapper's ability to translate the win binary OR to interface with the card, it is simply not setup to handle the hardswitch in most cases. I think the hardswitch works with ndiswrapper in kernel 2.6.11 but not in 13 dunno, maybe it's just my distro... I've spent hours and hours to no avail, and that seems to be the case... Here's why I see that. Because ifconfig doesn't show it, iwconfig doens't show it but the driver sees the hardware, that's because the radio is still off and you can't ifup wlan0/eth0/1 because it's not on. The card is on, but the card is reporting that it's disabled to the OS(which it doens't understand and errors). So, if your light doesn't come on, sorry about your luck. Get your 20 bucks ready and skip to the next section.

ndiswrapper -cont... If your light did come on, great, now type ifup wlan0 or ifup eth0 if for some reason you got the eth0 as your wifi.

From here scroll down to post config, which applies to both.

**********************************************************

Linuxant DriverLoader

Simple... go to www.linuxant.com and download the latest version WLAN driverloader rpm and run that badboy(use YaST to install the module) Much easier than compiling manually.

Point your browser to http://127.0.0.1:18020 login as root

First thing upload your windows drivers, first it will ask you for your INF file and then your SYS file. Simple as that, go ahead and ignore any initial errors it gives you about not being able to access the hardware or the drivers messed up, it's a bug in the program caused by the hardware switch mentioned above.

Once you've loaded your windows drivers, you'll need a license. go back to linuxant.com and at the very least get a trial license. But I think it's worth saving the headache to just drop the 20 bucks and get a permi license. If you guys are REALLY hardup someone can shell out the cache and I'll write a keygen(since I think shit like that should be open source anyway... the bastards). Anyway for this case, I really think it's worth the 20 bones. So, get yourself a license, which is based on your mac address and your email address(make sure you use a valid email). When you go into your driverloader config page, click settings and enter your driver information.

How to get your MAC address.:

Now that you have your license installed it's time to bring the interface up again. If you brought it up to get the license then it is already working and you may now skip down to the post install notes.

If it's not then here's what you must do. First thing you MUST do before ANYTHING else is hit Fn-F2 to bring the wifi up. The hardswitch works with driverloader it's just not automatic.

Now, as root, type "ifup wlan0" and you're in business. Move on to post install notes.


******Post*******

Now you're in business, go into your kde or gnome wifi/internet connection wizard and setup your wireless settings. You MUST specify an IP address, it has to be static. But it's not as bad as some might think. Those of you not down with the networking, here's how it goes..

If your routers IP address is 192.168.0.1 and it's setup to divvie out IP addresses then here's what you're going to do.. Set your IP address to anything above 100, ex. : 192.168.0.140, subnet mask will be 255.255.255.0 in 95% of cases.

Make sure you setup DNS/Host lookup. Primary DNS will be 192.168.0.1 or the same IP as your router. Leave secondary and trinary blank(if there). Change your host name to something else, domain name is optional, and domain search is optional, if you have a domain on your network, I probably don't have to tell you this but you ought to match your linux machine to the domain if you're going to browse the network(create administrator computer accounts in Windows Active Directory or linux LDAP, no local config is needed).

Now.... If you restart the machine, your wifi radio will be off... Don't start panicking when you're booting and notice that the wifi light isn't on. And WHATEVER YOU DO UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DON'T HIT FUNCTION F2 WHILE THE MACHINE IS BOOTING. You'll crash your shit so hard it's not funny.. Go ahead and read that one more time for me, I'll wait.

When you bring up your machine(restart or cold boot), let it boot. Driverloader/Ndiswrapper will come up properly and load your winblows drivers in despite the card reporting that it's disabled... Now, when you get to an IDLE desktop, THEN you may safely turn on the wifi radio using the hard buttons. This is the only time you can do it. If you're booting or shutting down it'll crash hard and won't boot again. I've installed both FC4 and SuSE so many times on this laptop, trust me I know, don't dick with it while booting or shutting down.

K, so you waited until you had an idle desktop turned your wifi on now open up a terminal and su root, then type "ifup wlan0" or eth0 for your weirdos out there. You're in business.. It should very quickly connect to the last AP you were connected to, etc.

You can do a quick shell script to do this for you, just keep in mind the ifup command won't work properly if the wifi isn't switched on. (but it's not a big deal if it's not on and you ifup, just don't do it while booting or shutting down, last warning)

DISCLAIMER, don't ask me about WEP, WPA, or Network Keys because I couldn't tell you the slightest thing about how to get those to function properly in linux(windows is a different story, I lub me some wifi security). For the purposes of this experiment it may be wise to disable all security on your AP/router save for mac filter(which allows only specified MAC addresses to connect). Should relieve some headaches.

Hope this helps. Please try to remember, I'm a newbie too so I'm just doing the best I can.

-Vex

EOF

may sound banal, it helps to

ifdown eth0

along with

ifup wlan0