Under slackware on the same machine (Dell Inspiron 1000 with truemobile 1300 wireless card), I successfully used ndiswrapper to access my wireless network. Under debian sarge 2.6.7, it's not working. This is what I've done so far:
[list = 1][*] added ndiswrapper sources to /etc/apt/sources.list[*] apt-get install ndiswrapper[*] apt-get install wireless-tools[*] ndiswrapper -i "my driver directory"[*] ndiswrapper -m (writes alias wlan0 ndiswrapper to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper)[/list = 1]

Now, when I type, ndiswrapper -l, it says that the hardware is not present for my driver, and I can't modprobe ndiswrapper. It returns:

FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found.

iwconfig returns:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

How can I enable the card?

Thanks,

Brian

So far you've successfully installed the ndiswrapper program, you also have to 'apt-get install ndiswrapper-source' to get the module source, which you then have to compile.

Thanks for the response.

Forgive me for being a total debian newbie, but I've a couple of questions. Why should I have to download the program AND the source? Also, how do I compile the source once its been downloaded?

Thanks so much for your help,

Brian

You're forgiven, I'm still pretty Debian-newbie too

The source is for the ndiswrapper kernel module, essentially the actual device driver for the wireless card. The program is basically just for adding the windows files and checking the status of the module.

Install your kernel source and kernel-headers if you haven't already (I'm assuming as a slackware user you're familiar with compiling a kernel, if not just ask for specifics). Also install kernel-package. When you've extracted everything go to /usr/src/linux and run 'make-kpkg modules_image' as root. This will make .deb files under /usr/src for everything in /usr/src/modules/. Then run 'dpkg -i filename.deb' to install the module. BTW make-kpkg can be used for installing a kernel the same way with 'make-kpkg kernel_image' which make a deb file for installing the kernel and any of its regular modules and will even update lilo. Hope this is clear.

Pretty much. Thanks a lot for your help! I am, however, going to install the kernel the debian way :-) Quick question though - I only have to run those two commands ('make-kpkg modules_image' and 'dpkg -i filename.deb') to install? I don't have to build and install the whole kernel?

Thanks,

Brian

That's where that article I learned from was No you shouldn't need to install the whole kernel, assuming you have the kernel source from the same version you're running. I've used make-kpkg to install the modules by themselves.

Now what do I do? Modprobe returns the original error! Is there another step?

Thanks,

Brian

The original error being the module not found? Are you sure you installed the .deb? It should have created /lib/modules/yourkernelversion/misc/ndiswrapper.o or ndiswrapper.ko.

I found the problem. My kernel is 2.6.7-1-686, not 2.6.7. There is no debian package with the source. Only the headers and the image are available. Do you know what I should do? Or does this mean I should compile ndiswrapper with those options? When I compiled ndiswrapper previously, I just used the defaults. I'll give it another shot and report back.

Brian

Well, the issue is this:

There is no source code for my kernel. It's a custom built image by the debian people.

The process puts the ndiswrapper.ko in /lib/modules/2.6.7/misc. /lib/modules/2.6.7-1-686 does not have a misc folder. Methinks I have to build my own kernel. Oh well. I'll report back.

Brian

zensufi,

I have had a similar problem to yours and here is my solution:

The README.Debian for the ndiswrapper-source is a bit "misleading". It does not have the full steps for a successful installation and the words "kernel-source" used on the Debian website reffering to ndiswrapper is utterly wrong..in a sense.

Every time you read, or someone says "kernel-source" when you are using a Debian-make kernel-image, shut them up and substitute with "kernel-headers".

Example on my system:

1) gives 2.6.10-1-686, as I am using the kernel-image-2.6.10-1-686 package

2) You DON'T need the kernel source for 2.6.10 as you have been told but the corresponding kernel header files, kernel-headers-2.6.10-1-686. As a sanity check you can to verify that the needed package is actually available!

3) Ndiswrapper-source installs a bzip2 file in /usr/src. Make sure this is unzipped: 4) go to your kernel headers directory, . There will be a very similar directory called linux-headers-2.6.10-1, don't go there!

5) Execute , which builds all modules in /usr/src/modules (the command make-kpkg is installed via the kernel-package package if you don't have it)

6) And thats the module sorted! All you need now is to install ndiswrapper-utils and wireless-tools. Then do the usual steps with ndiswrapper do install your windows drivers.

I hope I wasn't too late to help, I have had this problem and many others due to badly written Debian README's... (cough nvidia-kernel-source cough!)