Hello all,

This is my first post and i am new to linux. I have got a D-Link DWL-G520+ wireless card and i do not know how to configure it in linux. I have tried using ndiswrapper but it gives an error later on which i cant figure out, it says 'ndis driver installed' but not 'harware installed' , which according to the installation procedure, it should. It had been written in the prerequisites of ndiswrapper that linux kernel 2.4.26 is required, whereas mine is 2.4.18 , is that why it is giving error? And if that is the case then how can i update the kernel?

Secondly, if my card gets configured hopefully, i want to create an application to capture the wireless packets and get the header fields from them for analysis. I especially want to capture the beacon frame as it is vital for my project.

I have tried capturing in windows but cannot get the beacon frame, and also i have not found any specific options regarding 802.11 packet header fields extraction in any languages. I used JPcap too, but the kfuji one, not the sourceforge one. The sourceforge one does not seem to work with my windows 2000. Anyways, JPcap is also for ethernet packets and not specifically for 802.11 protocol. Also, i read in many articles that windows (WinPcap) does not support 802.11 management and control frame capture.

So, could someone tell me how to capture the packets? Which language supports that etc. Can it be done using perl? But first and foremost i need to get my card configured otherwise its no use! Please help, any help would be appreciated!

Raza

Welcome to LQ!

I'm not going to be a lot of help with the packet capturing, but I do have some advice on how to get ndiswrapper running. The kernel you are using may be too old to really use ndiswrapper, and updating to a newer kernel could be as easy as installing a newer kernel package from your distro. What distro do you use? You'll also need to install the kernel source code for the new kernel so you can re-compile ndiswrapper. You should be able to find the kernel source code at the same place you find the newer kernel.

Hi,

I'm using RedHat Linux 9. I'll try to get a newer kernel running, hope i understand how to install/upgrade it because it will be my first time! Hope someone else can help on packet capturing.

Raza

Unless you compile a kernel yourself, you may have difficulty finding a newer kernel for Red Hat 9 since Red Hat discontinued support for that distro quite some time ago. You may want to consider moving to a newer distro.

Oh, thanks for telling me that, i did'nt know that, compiling a kernel would be difficult for me . Maybe i should go for fedora or mandrake? I still havent got any response regarding packet capture from anyone

I would lean towards choosing Mandrake. Fedora has been doing things with their stock kernels that make using ndiswrapper rather difficult. It can be done, but Mandrake is much more ndiswrapper friendly.

Ok thanks, i'll do that! I hope the card gets configured hopefully! By the way, i heard that ndiswrapper has some problems and shouldn't be used unless it's an emergency. So, is there any other alternative for my card that you know of?

WHAT? OK, ndiswrapper isn't exactly trouble free, but I sure wouldn't characterize its use as only for an emergency. The basic problem is that many wireless chipset manufacturers refuse to either write linux drivers or to release information about the chipsets so someone else could write a driver (Hellooooooo, Broadcom....I'm talking about you......Anybody listening?????). That means that many of us have no linux drivers, and ndiswrapper allows us to use the windows drivers that are out there. I suppose you could stretch the definition of "emergency" to cover this. Anyway, if there is a native linux driver for ANY card, that should be the first choice. If there isn't, ndiswrapper is a perfectly acceptable choice. My wireless card (a Dell TrueMobil 1300) doesn't have a linux driver, so I use ndiswrapper every day.

Now with that said, some distros (Fedora in particular) aren't real compatible with ndiswrapper. Mostly this stems from some of the choices made when compiling the stock kernels (the infamous 4K stack falls into this category). However, given the prevalence of wireless cards, people have devised solutions for these troublesome kernels. For example, one of the Wireless forum regulars here (snecklifter) regularly posts about a project that recompiles kernels for Fedora that solve most of the ndiswrapper problems.

I really haven't done much research on your card. If you want to see if there is a native linux driver, do some searching here and at google. The biggest piece of information to find is the chipset your card uses. If you can find that (try looking at the output of lspci or lsusb) we might be able to point you towards something else. But is it very possible that there isn't a native linux driver, in which case ndiswrapper is a perfectly fine choice).

You're right! I had done some searching earlier and could not find the driver, so thats why i turned to ndiswrapper. The chipset of my card is Texas ACX 111 , i checked in the list of cards that ndiswrapper provides. Right now i just got mandrake and i'm in the process of checking out if i can get my card to work on that, hope it does....

The ACX 111 series of cards from TI has a driver, it is built into mandrake, but for me Mandrake just refuses to load the driver. The driver is the acx_100 selection (got this from ndis wrapper page).

If you get the card working under eiher ndis wrapper or by using the driver, let me know. As my Netgear card refuses to work with the linux driver (I will try ndis wrapper in the weekend when i have more time)

Majin_boy is right, there is a native linux driver project for this chip here. And to be honest, my original thought still stands: namely if there is a native linux driver, you should try that before using ndiswrapper. Majin, maybe if you post some of the errors you see when you load the module, we can look and see if there is anything to do.

Oh yeah, i had downloaded this driver and had tried it out, but i remember that it gave some error. I had done this, i guess about a week and a half ago, so can't remember what the error was, but it didnt work. Does it require a kernel updation, like ndiswrapper, or what? I'l go through it again. I had tried it on RedHat 9, now i'll try on Mandrake.

Hey, i just checked out this thread,

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/281947

Please go through it, any comments? Brundles is recommending the ndiswrapper over the acx100 drivers. So, now i'm confused!
The link
http://www.houseofcraig.net/acx100_howto.php
is also worth checking but i cant figure out what to install now!

Plus, i've managed to update my kernel on my RedHat linux 9 box, finally, with the help of someone else.

I'm so officially confused here, the acx100 documentation says not to use ndiswrapper, yet i see from some other sites that it has problems itself. Like from the site,
http://users.linpro.no/janl/hardware/wifi.html
i quote,
"Some turbo cards uses the acx111 chipset from Texas Instruments. This is supported by the acx100 driver. It is in alpha/beta status and TI is not forthcomming with documentation (or source code). This driver appears to have many issues, especially with the acx111 chipset. "

..........and mine is the acx111 chipset

Another link

http://students.iiit.ac.in/pipermail...st/000577.html

Ok, so i checked up on the documentation of the 0.2.0pre7 version of the acx100 driver from the site
http://www.houseofcraig.net/README-0.2.0pre7.txt
and it stated about the DWL-G520+ card,

" Also, due to similar card naming confusion (for further information, see bottom), people keep thinking certain cards they own work with this driver. Cards that are *NOT* based on ACX100 chipset (as opposed to the stupidly similarly named ACX100 versions DWL-120+, DWL-520+ and DWL-650+, which *do* have ACX100) are:
DWL-120 (PRISM2 chipset)
DWL-520 (PRISM2)
DWL-650 (PRISM2, minus few newer variants which D-Link messed up to have the ACX100 instead)
DWL-G120 (PRISM GT)
DWL-G520 (Atheros AR5212A)
DWL-G650, version A1 (PRISM GT)
DWL-G650, version B1 (Atheros AR5211)
DWL-G650, version B2 (Atheros AR5001)
DWL-AG520 (Atheros AR5212)
DWL-AB650 (Atheros AR5211)
DWL-AG650 (Atheros AR5212)
DWL-G520+ (TNETW1130: not fully supported yet, but it's being worked on!)
DWL-G650+ (TNETW1130) "

and then i looked at the documentation of the latest release acx100 version 0.2.0pre8 , which said

"Other Texas Instruments chips which are e.g. 802.11g capable and are named TNETW1130/1230 (ACX111) started to actually be supported in a useful way by this driver some time ago only, so due to different hardware implementations some ACX111 card designs might still not be working yet, even at this time [041203]."

..... BUT! Another thing, the DWL-G520+ has been taken out of the list above. So, i guess it means that acx is ok for it now?

...then again, what about the other posts i made above