Ndiswrapper / wlan0 problems
 

I have a problem getting my wireless network card on my CompaqPressario laptop which is running Fedora Core 2. It is a Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g. I am using the newest version of ndiswrapper (0.11) and the windows xp version of my driver. I went through the steps in the installation without any problems. My output for ndiswrapper -l is:

Installed ndis drivers:
b57win32 driver present

Just like it should be. When I look through the grep the output of dmesg for 'ndiswrapper,' I get:

ndiswrapper version 0.11 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=no)
ndiswrapper: driver b57win32 (Broadcom,06/19/2004,7.80.0.0) added

The only thing I can tell is missing from here that is in the installation is the line about wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx, which is where my problem lies. I have done the ndiswrapper -m command and have the alias in my modprobe file and the thing even shows up in the gui version of the network manager, but when i click activate, it says:

ndiswrapper device wlan0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

When I say iwconfig, I get:

eth0 no wireless extensions.

lo no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

Obviously no wlan0. I can't make any modifications to any of these 3 to set up my wireless card, so how do I get the wlan0 stuff to appear. I know this stuff has been asked about before, but I can't draw the parallel between their questions and mine. Keep in mind that I am relatively a linux noob.

I have heard some rumors that Fedora doesn't understand the wlan0 name for some reason. You may try getting into your /etc/modprobe.conf file and change the wlan0 to eth1. I also think that modprobe.conf is for 2.6 series kernels. If your running a 2.4 series kernel, I think that you need to edit your modules.conf file instead.

I've tried doing the eth1 thing. Nothing changes what comes up when I say iwconfig.

Hey blandman,

Edit: Removed following advice

Regards
Chris

I guess I forgot to mention. I just recompiled the kernel too. I'm using 2.6.9.

Well this is a likely driver malfunction. DId you get the driver from the cd that came with your card or from the ndiswrapper card list page? Do the latter and you should be fine as I'm running exactly the same chipset. You'll need to remove the driver and uninstall ndiswrapper first.
Regards
Chris

Is that wifi card (BCM94306) revision 2 or revision 3? Use cat /proc/pci | grep -i broad

I have the exact same problem as blandman. My card is BCM94302 rev 2. Someone please help as I am totally lost! I am also using a 2.6.9 vanilla kernel. Nothing seems to work. See my post at http://www.dexplor.com/phpBB2/viewto...ht=ndiswrapper (at the bottom)
for more info.

Thanks in advance for any help! This is driving me crazy.

Hey guys, new to this forum but when ever you use a new kernel you need to redo the make install for ndiswrapper. I had the same problem.

Unfortunately, this was not my problem; but never-the-less, a good point. The fix for my problem was to download and install the drivers mentioned here

Worked like a charm!

You may have missed steps 3 and 4 at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/p...p?Installation

Ensure you follow the steps properly.

I already got it to work on my Fefora Core 3 (Broadcom chipset).

FC3 is alright with the wlan0

though if you recompiled with 2.6.9 (I did the same thing =D)

you need to be careful with your selections (not just what you select, but what you do not select)

I'm using ndiswrapper to load a bcmwl5a driver for the same Broadcom BCM94306 hardware (on an HP ze4900 laptop, running a 2.6.10 kernel). I'm also using ndiswrapper-0.13pre1, which may or may not make any different.

A couple of things are obvious from what you have posted...

> ... My output for ndiswrapper -l is:
> Installed ndis drivers:
> b57win32 driver present
>
> Just like it should be. ...

That isn't quite what it should be though. It should also say "harware present", and it doesn't.
I suspect that means the driver is not detecting the hardware. I'd use google to search on "bcmwl5" and "bcmwl5a", which are the two drivers supplied by HP. Both worked on the HP laptop. (Someone else posted a message with a URL to another forum that has a URL to HP's web site. I didn't look, but assume that will get a copy of the same drivers.)

> ndiswrapper device wlan0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.
>
> When I say iwconfig, I get:
...
> Obviously no wlan0. ...

Note that before you run iwconfig you must run ifconfig to configure the wlan0 device; otherwise, it won't be found by iwconfig. In this case I suspect ifconfig isn't going to find it either though, but...

Your ifconfig command needs to look something like this:

ifconfig wlan0 host broadcast 192.168.0.255

Where "host" is replaced an IP address (or a name that will be resolved to an IP address, for example by being found in the /etc/hosts file), and the "192.168.0.255" broadcast address should be correct for whatever your subnet actually is.

Then you can run iwconfig, with a command that might look something close to this:

iwconfig wlan0 essid your_id_string key your_WEP_key

Where "your_id_string" is replaced with the correct ESSID for the access point you will connect to, and "your_WEP_key" is replaced with an appropriate WEP key to match the access point.

That will automatically result in a route being added for the specific subnet. Hence if you wlan0 device is given the IP address of 192.168.3.20, all packets to 192.158.3.x addresses will be sent to that interface. The problem is that no others will be sent to it! You'll need to add routing, and perhaps a default gateway route, as needed for everything
else. Hence you might have something like this,

route add -net localnet netmask 255.255.255.0 dev wlan0
route add default gw fire wlan0

Where "localnet" is the name of a network found in /etc/networks, and the netmask is adjusted to match it. In my case that happens to be an entry that looks like "localnet 192.168.0.0", as all of my wired LAN hosts are on that subnet. You'll need to adjust that to match your particular network topology. Regardless, the default route to a gateway needs to be set to whatever route you have to the Internet. In that example, "fire" is the host name of my firewall, which is on the "localnet" subnet (a route to the gateway must exist).





__________________

Ok, I got my 0000:02:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03) to work.

You need to disable preemptible support in the kernel. Ndiswrapper has trouble with it, You should not get: (preempt=yes,smp=no), rather you should get (preempt=no,smp=no). Also, try disabling IRQ's in your bootloader config. This is the most common #1 fix for people.

Some distros don't have wlan0, wlan1(they're just symbolic links)... A few just use eth0, eth1. Load ndiswrapper, then type:

#ifconfig eth0 up
#ifconfig eth1 up
#ifconfig eth3 up

One of these will be your wifi and the other your ethernet. Find the wifi one, and make a symbolic link:

#ln -s /dev/eth0 /dev/wlan0

This way you can use wlan with no prob.

Also yes, if you install a new kernel, you need to recompile and reinstall ndiswrapper.

blandman, you need the wireless tools package infact, anyone who types iwconfig and gets nothing needs this package.

I spend 70 hours, of which 20 were spend sleeping, eathing, and all that other stuff. I've read every forum, every manual, all the wiki.... =)