ndiswrapper and generic smp kernel

Bazzaah · 05-10-2008, 05:20 AM

I have been trying to get ndiswrapper to work with generic smp kernel on Slack 12.

Ndiswrapper seemed to install just fine but as soon as I try and load the module

# modprobe ndiswrapper

I get

FATAL: module ndiswrapper not found

Wireless works well on the (patched) non-smp kernel.

I am struggling to understand where to start looking for a solution with SMP, which I gather, Slackware supports by default.

Any thoughts/guidance please?

Thanks in advance.

BCarey · 05-10-2008, 09:27 AM

How did you install ndiswrapper? ndiswrapper is both an application and a kernel module. The module needs to be rebuilt for a new kernel. So if you changed from one kernel to another you will need to rebuild and reinstall ndiswrapper.

Brian

Bazzaah · 05-10-2008, 10:11 AM

Thanks.

What I did was follow the un/install routine in the ndiswrapper Install notes. Drivers uninstalled etc.

I thought perhaps I had made a mistake so I uninstalled and redid through the ndiswrapper SlackBuild.

I then

reinstalled the drivers.

depmod -a

modprobe ndiswrapper

Still the same error.

/etc/ndiswrapper
/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper

are present so both aspects of ndiswrapper seem to have been installed.

Luckily, the generic kernel works fine.

Still it would be nice to have net access on the most appropriate kernel for my CPU.

BCarey · 05-10-2008, 10:28 AM

/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper is the application part. /etc/ndiswrapper is the configuration part. The module will be installed in /lib/modules/your_kernel. To see whether the module exists for the kernel you are running you can "modprobe -l | grep ndiswrapper". If it's not there (which it won't be, because you couldn't modprobe it), you can see where the package you made put it by doing "grep ndiswrapper.ko /var/log/packages/ndiswrapper_version_number".

Actually, looking at your post, I want to be clear about one thing. When you used the SlackBuild, you used it while running the smp kernel, and installed it using installpkg/upgradepkg, correct?

Brian

Bazzaah · 05-10-2008, 10:41 AM

Thanks again.

To answer the last part of your post first, yes I was in the smp kernel and I installed the .tgz that the SlackBuild output with

installpkg filename.tgz

There were no error messages but it's not 'taking'.

Something has changed as in the generic kernel my Local IP is 192.128.0.3 but it was 192.128.0.2 this morning before I started on this.

BCarey · 05-10-2008, 10:50 AM

So what does "grep ndiswrapper.ko /var/log/packages/ndiswrapper_package_version" show?

Brian

Bazzaah · 05-10-2008, 11:10 AM

It shows

/lib/modules/2.6.21.5/misc/ndiswrapper.ko

but there are of course two entries in /lib/modules

Presumably the solution lies in getting grep etc to point to the 2.6.21.5-smp entry?

shadowsnipes · 05-10-2008, 11:14 AM

If you used the SlackBuild from SlackBuilds.org and your package doesn't have smp in its name, then it is obvious it was built for a non-smp kernel. $(uname -r | tr '-' '_') goes into the package name, so it would be named something like:

ndiswrapper-1.47_2.6.21.5_smp-i486-SBo.tgz

Did you mess with your kernel sources at all?

Bazzaah · 05-10-2008, 11:20 AM

nope, haven't touched anything at all (unless patching the huge kernel counts)

I get the error both with Slackbuild and the tar.gz from NDISwrapper.

The NDISwrapper did not indicate that it couldn't be used for a smp kernel. Anyway....

BCarey · 05-10-2008, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bazzaah

It shows

/lib/modules/2.6.21.5/misc/ndiswrapper.ko

but there are of course two entries in /lib/modules

Presumably the solution lies in getting grep etc to point to the 2.6.21.5-smp entry?

Perhaps you could try the SlackBuild again. The installed package was not built for the smp kernel, which means it was not compiled on the smp kernel. You can look at the SlackBuild yourself to see that it determines the running kernel with uname, and will name the package accordingly (as well as installing in the correct /lib/modules tree). You can check yourself after you rebuild the package that the kernel names (both in the package name and in the module path) match uname.

Brian

Alstare · 05-10-2008, 02:11 PM

Just to verify...

I used the slackbuild ndiswrapper script on a vanilla 12.1 install running the generic-smp kernel and it worked fine out of the box.

Here's how it should go...

Code:

Install the Slackbuilds ndiswrapper package.

ndiswrapper -i <yourdriver.inf>
ndiswrapper -m
ndiswrapper -ma
ndiswrapper -mi

Edit rc.inet1.conf & rc.wireless.conf as required

Here's the output of "ndiswrapper -v"

Code:

root@Server:/home/alstare# ndiswrapper -v
utils version: '1.9', utils version needed by module: '1.9'
module details:
filename:       /lib/modules/2.6.24.5-smp/misc/ndiswrapper.ko
version:        1.52
vermagic:       2.6.24.5-smp SMP mod_unload 686

Bazzaah · 05-10-2008, 03:35 PM

Something is definitely amiss and I know that in Slackware that almost certainly equates to my error (you know where you stand with Slackware, even if you don't know how you got there, lol).

I think the thing to do is to compile a fresh kernel. I've been thinking about it anyway so perhaps I should break my duck and just do it!

In the meantime, thanks for your help and comments, I appreciate the help.

Alstare · 05-10-2008, 04:11 PM

[QUOTE=Bazzaah;3149381]Something is definitely amiss and I know that in Slackware that almost certainly equates to my error (you know where you stand with Slackware, even if you don't know how you got there, lol).[/QUOTED]

Hah, so true, so very very true...

Good luck on your battle.

Bazzaah · 05-17-2008, 02:31 AM

nothing to see here, all sorted.