I have been trying to get the 'ndiswrapper' package working for a wireless PCMCIA card I bought. Everything compiles correctly, the NDIS drivers get correctly installed, but when I try try to 'modprobe ndiswrapper', I get the error 'Operation not permitted.'

After some digging around, I feel pretty sure that this is a known Fedora problem having to due with the 'stacksize' configured into the kernel. According to the posts I read, 'ndiswrapper' needs 8k (and maybe even 12k). Also, although the compilation didn't fail, it did give me a warning about the stack size being limited to 4k.

So, I know what the problem is (I think), but the real question is: What can I do about it?!

Any help is much appreciated!

u*

That doesn't sound like the 4K stack problem to me. That usually results in a frozen machine, not an error. Are you root when issuing the modprobe command, because this strikes me as more of a permissions problem.

Hi... Thanks for the response.

Yes, I am 'root'... I throw caution to the wind and do everything as root!

Do you think there could still be a permissions problem? (I don't see how...) Would it be on the 'ndiswrapper.ko' file?

Since having this problem, I completely reformatted and re-installed Fedora 3 on this laptop. The base installation of the original ISO CDs works fine, but once I've applied the updates, the system hangs when booting the newer kernel at the 'Initializing hardware... storage network' point. (It hangs on 'network' and never gets to 'audio'.) Booting the original kernel is fine.

('ndiswrapper' is not yet installed on this new installation.)

So, that's a new line of thought...

Thanks,
u*

I spent the weekend (off and on) installing/configuring ndiswrapper on FC3. I found the most useful information at: http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/l...mp11-linux.htm

The article specifically addresses the stack size issue you mentioned. In my case, I used a modified kernel (with 16K stack size) in accordance with the instructions.

I was a lot of work but, I was successful.

You might also have a read through some of the links in this thread . Snecklifter is involved with a site devoted to solving this problem. There are a number of pre-compiled RH kernels with a 16K stack limit. It might be worth tryin one of those.