ndiswrapper probs

razza frazzin stupid fedora hummina my lack of frumminin knowledge [mumble]
ok, the deal is, im having a hell of a time installing ndiswrapper and subsequently, the marvel chipset drivers for the wireless hardware. I already have the drivers, but I have no clue how to install ndiswrapper or the drivers through the GUI (the shiny pictures that OSes put over the text) or through GNU's little command line thingie. I'm not kidding about my lack of knowledge, so gimme detail, or else my next post will be "HUH?" instead of "Wow, that worked so great, you're the most intelligent and kindhearted person I've ever been helped by"

First of, i'm going to assume your'e using Fedora Core 3. If your'e not, your SOL, 'cuz I can't help you there. Now, if my assumption is correct, you don't have the Kernel sources, which is the source of the kernel and is also what ndiswrapper uses to work. What you need to do is go to the same place you downloaded FC3, and download the kernel source (google it), stick em' on a CD, and put them in /usr/src/ or something like that

/Pisces

-> Pisces Huhhh!?

1. Download ndiswrapper
2. Decompress tar.gz

> tar -zxf ndiswrapper-0.11.tar.gz

3. After the decompress enter the ndiswrapper

4. As ROOT <IMPORTANT!>

> su

(enter your root password)

> make install

This should compile both the kernel module and the userspace utilities
Your ndiswrapper is installed!

5. Know the XP drivers...

> ndiswrapper -i </path/to/inffile.inf>

This copies all necessary files to /etc/ndiswrapper and creates the config files for your card

> ndiswrapper -l

to see the status of your installed drivers. If you have installed the correct driver you should see something like this:

Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5  present

Where "present" means that you have a PCI-device present that can be used with the
driver bcmwl5

6. To load the module

>  modprobe ndiswrapper

If you get no error the driver should now be loaded, you can test this by doing a "dmesg"

> dmesg 
.... 
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

7. To load the module at boot time

> echo "ndiswrapper" >> /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-<version>

8. Interface configuration

something like this...

>iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid> 
>ifconfig wlan0 up 
>dhcpcd wlan0

I have tryed to make my wireless card to work but i just found out that this card does not yet work in linux there are some problems to be solved before my card could work as far i can understand some documents about...
So it is not 100% sure that this will work for your card... try to find out more about your card like try google it


Best of luck !

HUH?

ok, that was a very nice copying of the readme file, but it didn't help witth the fact that I've already read the readme and haven't been abel to install ndiswrapper. and no, I'm on fedorah core 2. I'm way too dumb to understand the readme. You actually have to explain every Single STEP or else I have no clue. No, seriously, you have to explain. for instance: when I go to the terminal, it opens gibberish#<username>:ksajdh or something like that instead of a nice clean >. typing \ gets a > but doesn't seem to do anything else and it's only temporary. any reason? how do you list files in a directory? I think I knew once, but I don't even know how to do that anymore. damn I'm pitiful. I'll give people 48 hours from 3:00 december 21, and then I'm switching back to windows. If I can't even get the internet running...

Charlie:

It's not really that difficult. I've gotten to work with my Fedora Core 2 and Fedora Core 3. The one thing that you need with Linux is patience. From your last post, you know how to open a Command Line Terminal, or as you put it

it opens gibberish#<username>:ksajdh or something like that instead of a nice clean >. typing \ gets a >

From there you can do a directory listing by typing ls or to get a better listing, I type ls -altr. Now find where you downloaded the NDISWRAPPER to and change the directory to where it is located by typing

cd /<name of directory where ndiswrapper is>

Since you've read the INSTALL file, you must know how to uncompress or Untar the file. What you need to do is what it says in the file. If you have WEP enabled on your Wireless router then you need to try the following command

> iwconfig wlan0 key restricted (then your WEP code)

If you still have questions, just post it here. Don't give up, Linux is very nice once you get to know it.

Originally posted by charlie_man HUH? ... typing \ gets a > but doesn't seem to do anything else and it's only temporary. any reason? how do you list files in a directory?

You'll have to get used to the slashes going in a different direction. "\" is the root directory in DOS; however; in Linux, this is a concatenation command indicating that you want to break up a command on more than one line. This is why it doesn't appear to do anything (you're appending nothing to nothing). To make things simple as far as directory navigation, the commands are nearly the same as DOS but the slashes go in the other direction.

DOS Linux
=== =====
dir ---> ls
cd ---> cd
copy ---> cp
xcopy ---> cp -R
move ---> mv
del ---> rm

Also, "man" is your friend. It is short for "manual" and will bring up a wealth of information on a particular command. For example, at the command prompt, try typing:

"man ls "

this should answer some of your questions regarding directory listing. From the man page type ":q" to exit. Don't give up. Linux is a GREAT OS. As efanning says, it just takes patience and LOTS of practice.