ndiswrapper having problems on Debian
 

Ok, I know i'm beating a dead horse here and i have diligently tried to read and read some more on instructions for installing ndiswrapper and making my wireless card work.

I am currently running Debian 4.0 (Etch) on a 2GHz SmartStep 200N Dell laptop.


A few things first. I'm not sure where my system is at anymore and was wondering if I should start fresh or something. I've tried to follow so many instruction and how-to's i'm not sure ndiswrapper is installed correctly or even running properly.

Also when i began this process i was trying to use a Netgear
WG111 version 1 USB wireless adapter, but switched over to a DELL TrueMobile 1150 Series PCMCIA card. I'll explain why in a sec.

The ndiswrapper install went smoothly i suppose. I tried to use ndiswrappers official install guide but got lost in the very beginning. I moved on to searching forums and found some instructions that once followed seem to get ndiswrapper and utilities installed. Next i proceeded to

1. ndiswrapper -i /path_to_driver/driver.inf (I still have the CD so i fished the driver off of it.

2. ndiswrapper -m (which also worked i guess, now when i run it, it says modprobe config already contains alias directive

3. ndiswrapper -l (which also worked and said device was found and hardware installed.

4. ifconfig wlan0 up (which does not work and i receive and Error saying Error while getting interface flags: No such device.

So from here i tried to follow some various forum advice but to no avail. I then started to wonder if the USB card may not even work due to the fact that i have a slightly older laptop that only has 1.0 USB ports and my wireless device is 2.0.

Well from here i decided to go back to the original card that came with the laptop wich is the TrueMobile card. Sadly my card must be one of the first models because it is not included in the ndiswrapper/list page.

I am also having problems finding the driver for this card. I do have the original CD but of course it's from DELL and nothing is intuitive. So i'm not even sure what file or files i need off that CD.

Lastly, i tried to lspci with the card inserted but it doesn't seem to show up on the list of hardware that prints out. Oh and i made sure that pcmicia-cs and pcmcia-utils was installed.

Ooops and one more thing, i have subsequently tried to remove the netgear driver file from ndiswrapper but it won't let me. I'm not quite sure what i'm doing wrong their.

I know this is a long post and i hope people will bear with me. I tried to be as descriptive as possible in order for people to help me best. And i greatly appreciate any responses or advice. Thanks in advance.

Cabala

Well i have to admit, that i have no idea how i got it to work but it does and i'm now connected to my wireless AP.

However, I would really like to understand the process and maybe even one day help someone else out.

I don't think i even ever properly loaded the correct driver. Also i found that my device was not being referred to as wlan0 but eth2 and again don't know why.

I'm sorta of curious if my USB adapter will work now too. I am still open to suggestions from my first post and also any on how to go back a redo the process, maybe then i might understand what i actually did to make it work and can add my card to the ndiswrapper list.

Cabala

The Truemobile card doesn't need ndiswrapper and will undoubtedly work better with native Linux drivers.

The Netgear will probably only work with ndiswrapper. If it was me, the Netgear would be a paperweight, at best.

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/

Amen brother, you are not alone. If I could, I would answer your plea for help. This is extremely frustrating. My broadcom card is working, sometimes, for now, but only because God watches out for children and idiots (me).

Good luck - hopefully some of the responses to your post will help you (I haven't read them all because, I had to respond while my connection seems to be working!).