I am trying to install ndiswapper with the WinXP drivers for my Netgear MA111v1 USB WiFi adapter under Slackware.

I tried following the instructions on the ndiswapper webpage and everything went fine right up until I tried to modprobe the module.

I built kernel 2.6.13 with GCC 4.0.1, installed it, rebooted. I then built ndiswrapper 1.2 with the 2.6.13 source tree available and, again, with GCC 4.0.1. Following the instructions, I installed my Netgear driver with:

#su
#ndiswrapper -i /global-share/ma111_cdv2/MA111SW/WinXP/NETMA111.INF

Continuing to follow the instructions, I tried:

#ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
netma111 driver present, hardware present

Yay, looks good. Next:

#modprobe ndiswrapper
FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.13-hack-1.3/misc/ndiswrapper.ko) Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

@#$)(*! Ok, so:

#dmesg
...
ndiswrapper: unknown symbol wireless_send_event

Any ideas? Is this a problem with the ndiswrapper source? A problem with the driver? Do I dare get the latest version from CVS and risk more bugs? Speaking of which, ndiswrapper-1.3rc1 did the same thing.

Update:

I disabled wireless extensions in the kernel configuration earlier. I enabled them and rebuilt the kernel, and that fixed the modprobe problem in the original post.

Now, when I modprobe, the system just crashes.

Yay.

Linux: Weeks of adventure, frustration, and wall-induced bruises on your forehead with every driver install or your money back. Guaranteed.

Did you recompile ndiswrapper against the good kernel? By the way, it usually isn't a real good idea to be using the ndiswrapper rc versions unless you are a glutton for punishment. In fact I like to stay a version or two behind the latest release.

System crashes like that can also be an sign of a serious incompatibility between ndiswrapper and the windows driver. Is the one you're using the one suggested by ndiswrapper?


Please feel free to vent in the appropriate direction. The doofi at Netgear are the ones who put out hardware without linux drivers. Quite frankly, its absolutely amazing that these devices work with Linux at all given the downright hostile attitude most hardware vendors take towards linux.

Went through this process with the newly compiled kernel in the ndiswrapper source...

>su
#ndiswrapper -e netma111
#make uninstall
#exit
>make distclean
>make
>su
#make install
#ndiswrapper -i <driver>
#modprobe ndiswrapper

At this point, it actually does insert the module. But, then all hell breaks loose. After a few minutes I guess the kernel just panics because the register contents are dumped to the screen and that's all she wrote.

So...I guess I'm out of luck!? The linux-wlan-ng drivers work better than ndiswrapper (at least I actually get a wlan interface), but no WPA support.

I didn't say these problems are entirely Linux's fault; just that attempting to use Linux will result in adventure, frustration, and bruises. And, you're right, part of the problem is that vedors do not provide real Linux drivers. That said, all the drivers in the world will not fix the WPA problem. And yeah, there's WPA Supplicant. But, I am sure...if I ever get to that point...WPA Supplicant will provide it's own frustrations...

Thanks for the help. If you have any other ideas, please let me know. I really do appreciate it despite my tone.

i'm replying to the part about "no WPA"

looking at this website:
http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/

my guess is that linux-wlan-ng probably doesn't support wpa_supplicant. then again, you probably already knew that. but the link also shows what drivers will support WPA. is it possible that one of the other drivers (native linux or winXP) will work with your card?

personally, i installed ndiswrapper but i am not using an smc driver, even though my card is an smc2835w (version 1)- it just flat out doesn't work for whatever reason. but, i found out that my card uses the prism duette chipset, which is also used in the netgear wg511 wireless card. so i tried the netgear drivers with ndiswrapper and it actually worked. who would have known? this is just to say that maybe there is another driver out there that will support your card's chipset?

as for a reply to your message overall:

i know what you mean by going through adventures and head bruises- since the end of august i have posted several times about trying to get my card up and running with WPA. i just got it to work the way i wanted it to this weekend. i think there is a solution for you too. i (and others, i imagine) would like to help, but more debugging info is needed.

since i don't know much about your card, i would generically say, try the ndiswrapper route. i would also follow the advice of handdog and go with a stable version of ndiswrapper to eliminate its stability as a possible problem. and try using other windows drivers with ndiswrapper- the "lists" page on the ndiswrapper.sourceforge website should give you some hints/leads to try. and if you possibly can- try doing a dmesg before the system crashes and write down the output. i found that as an invaluable tool to help me debug.

good luck.

Well, you may not be out of luck. The kind of symptioms you describe sound like an incompatibility between ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers. It does happen. What I would do would be to visit the ndiswrapper wiki (see my sig for the link) and try the drivers they suggest. If that doesn't help, I'd visit the netgear site and try drivers for XP, 2000 or NT (more or less in that order) and see if any of those work.

The other approach would be to try a version or two back on ndiswrapper. If this sounds a lot like trial and error, you're right. Sometimes with ndiswrapper the trick is to find the magic combination of ndiswrapper version and driver that works.

And I don't mean to dismiss your bitching about wireless in Linux, its just that I want to make sure other readers of this thread understand WHY wireless in Linux is such a mess. It would be a mess in Windows too if the manufacturers relied on Microsoft for drivers. Personally I think it is a very sad state of affairs for Linux because many, many new users have laptops and that means one of the major criteria for judging Linux a success or failure is the ability to easily get a wireless connection up and running. And since many people are trying Linux with existing hardware, they didn't investigate which cards work well with Linux. Unfortunately, the MA111 has the reputation as being one of the most difficult devices to get running under Linux.

I checked the list of suggested drivers before I started and downloaded the appropriate ones. I will try the 2000 and NT4 drivers, though.

I spent an hour writing a counter rant to the "hardware vendors do not provide drivers" argument. I thought about it some more last night and realized decided I didn't think that was a good argument. I also realized that I hate it when help questions turn into advocacy arguments...and that I was starting just that with my earlier snide comment; so, I left it out. Maybe I will post it to an advocacy forum.

Hallo! =) I'm currently having similar problems, trying to get a Linksys WMP54GS card to work. lspci doesn't really return much info, but the ndiswrapper wiki had it listed, so I got the drivers they recommended. After wrasslin' with the 4kb Stack problem, finally got it to compile right. Yay me. Now, I get when I try to install the drivers, and I think it's related to the aforementioned extensions...

I am still very n00bish when it comes to compiling kernels, mostly have gotten a stable 2.6.15 kernel working through the tried and true methods of guesstimation and luck. Where exactly in the config menus do I find those extensions to turn them on?

System specs below:

Slackware 10.1 on 2.6.15.6 kernel
AMD 64 3000+ (1.8 gHz)
MSI K8N/Neo motherboard
512MB RAM
WMP54GS
Brain made from coconut & bamboo @.o

Thanks!

On the newer kernels, I think there are a couple of places to load things in. First is in the Networking section, you need to enable the generic 802.11 Networking Stack and probably several of the options. Second, in the Network Device Support, there is a Wireless LAN section, and I think you at very least need to enable the section, even if you don't choose any of the drivers available.

It's probably not constructive to say this, but I did fix my problem with the MA111 w/ Linux. I bought a Mac. Seemed like the best option.

*fanfare*
Ladies and gentlemen, I write this post from KDE, running on a non-broadcasted SSID configured w/ndiswrapper & using wpa_supplicant for WPA support. Took a week to figure it out, but I is here.

Works great too. Now I just need some advice on how to tweak it to perfection...

I'd like this to be mostly transparant. When I log in (or before), I'd like "modprobe ndiswrapper" to go off, "ifconfig wlan0 up" to happen, and the actual wpa_supplicant commands to run automatically, although I'll be more than happy with a user-activated script. As I'm a , I'd feel safer with some expert guidance on what I need to do to accomplish this, as I've never made or edited a script before...

Also, and really top of my priorities, is I use dhcpcd to get an IP from my router. No real problem there, but I'd like to use a static IP (since I have port-forwarding needs). "netconfig" doesn't seem to configure my wireless, and so I'll need to set it up manually, but once again, I'd like it to be autmatically configured after that, and I'm unsure on the best way to set it up manually...

Thank you very much for all the help!

[edit]Adding what I did to help others

I took Hangdog's suggestion and trolled through my kernel config and found the sections he mentioned (didn't need to turn on the extra options he mentioned under 802.11 Networking Stack, none matched my setup).

I recompiled, added the kernel to my /boot as bzImagetest, setup LILO, and rebooted back into the test kernel. I then made sure I uninstalled the Windows WRT54GS driver from ndiswrapper and then "make uninstall" ndiswrapper. Recompiled, no errors, so I "make install". No errors there either.

Installed the Windows drivers using ndiswrapper, came back with "Driver installed, device present". NOTE: this is not what is supposed to come up according to README, supposed to be "Driver present, device present" but I continued anyways.

"modprobe ndiswarapper" went off w/o a hitch

At this point I'd set my router (WRT54G) to broadcast the SSID, no encryption (for testing), and tried "iwlist wlan0 scan". This did not work, and still doesn't. No bother, I know my SSID.

"iwconfig wlan0 essid myssid", came back with an association. Goodie. "ifconfig wlan0 up", and it was there. "dhcpcd wlan0" got me an address, and all was peachy.

Then I had to work with wpa_supplicant. The ndiswrapper wiki has an article on wpa_supplicant that was very helpful, since you have to create your own .config (not hard, really). The wpa_supplicant README is a wealth of info, and the example wpa_supplicant.conf has many great examples to work from. Once it was ready, I set my router to not broadcast the SSID, and turned on the WPA-PSK setting (TKIP is what I chose, for compatibility). And then I rebooted, since that seems to be the only thing that lets Slackware reset everything. Didn't connect. OK... digging further, I saw that since I hid the SSID, I needed to put in "ap_scan=2". I also went ahead and generated the psk info and not my ASCII string to make things a little smoother. So now my wpa_supplicant looked like this:Rebooted again, did the 4 commands to get it up and running, and it works!

Congrats on getting it to work! By the way, it would be useful if you can post a description of what worked for you. It will be helpful when people find this thread in the future.

OK, now for the fine tuning. As a start, I would suggest using your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file as the way to do this. In Slackware, this is the last file run at boot and it is the designated place for user customization to be done. So simply enter the commands you use to bring the card up and configure it into rc.local and they will be run at boot.

As far as assigning a static IP, you need to have two lines:

ifconfig wlan0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx Where xxx is the IP you want to use
route add default gw yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy Where yyy is the IP address of your router.

You also need to edit your /etc/resolv.conf file to include your ISP's nameservers, with one nameserver per line:

nameserver zzz.zzz.zzz.zzz Where zzz is the IP address of the nameserver. Sometime you only need to have a single line pointing at your router. Try it and see if it works. If it doesn't, then add your ISP's nameserver.

Thanks Hangdog, that worked pefectly. resolv.conf already had the nameservers in it, probably from the previous dhcpcd commands, so didn't need to futz w/it.