sorry about that...

i'll try to get everything in there from now on. i was just trying to get rid of info i didn't think you needed.

when i try "dhcpcd wlan0", the console just sits there for about 5-10 minutes then switches to the next line. if i enter "ifconfig" after that, i notice that wlan0 isn't there anymore and i have to type "ifconfig wlan0 up" once again.

You must give us more information. ESSID any gives that the card will connect to any ESSID name. It's no big deal now.

Device "lo" is a loop back device, that is always there. It's a device that is used to make your machine able to talk to it self. It's usally IP-address "127.0.0.1" or "localhost".

The command "ndiswrapper -m" adds ndiswrapper to one file (/etc/modconf or something similary). You only needs to make that command ones, until you reinstall your Linux installation or don't use ndiswrapper anymore.

What kind of device? USB, PCI or ?

"lspci" gives info about PCI devices. "lsusb" gives for USB devices.

what does "lsmod | grep ndis" gives?

what does "ifconfig wlan0" gives?

what does "ndiswrapper -l" gives?

Look in yout log files for help. Look for something about "wlan0", "ndiswrapper" or your wlan card. I think thos are in "/var/log/syslog" or "/var/log/messages". Look around in what you could think is relevant files. You could try "grep -e 'wlan0' /var/log/messages" to see if there is any information.

Someone that knows slackware should tell you more about what files you shold show us. That differs between distributions, and I'm not a slackware man.

Just out of curiosity, do you have an ifcfg-wlan0 file in your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory?

apologies again. i should've started with waaaaaay more details than i did.

sadly, i used to work tech support for sbc internet services. i should know better than that.

the laptop i'm using is an old compaq presario 1201t, the card i'm using is a netgear ma521, and the router i'm connecting to is a linksys wrk54g wireless-g. i tried to find a link for the router but linksys' website didn't have anything on that one...

i'm typing this post from my laptop right now...so it seems to be working at the moment. i'm still having to type in the commands

modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig wlan0 essid phar66
ifconfig wlan0 up
dhcpcd wlan0

when i want to connect to the internet. sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. it's pretty sporadic. last night i was on for about 15 minutes, and then my link light went dead again. then it came back up an hour later.

i'm beginning to think that the problem might be either my netgear card or my parent's linksys router. i don't have any problems getting my card to work on one of their laptops though...

"lsmod | grep ndis" shows

"ifconfig wlan0" gives me

and "ndiswrapper -l" still shows that the net8180 driver and hardware are present.

everything's working right now, though...so i guess those messages aren't too helpful.

i did find the logs that you mentioned, so at least i know where to look the next time it gives out. to answer bushidozen's question i don't even see a sysconfig directory in /etc...um...should it be there? i havn't really erased anything since i installed slackware...so most everything is exactly where it was when i first started this adventure.

i typed in the command "grep -e 'wlan0' /var/log/messages" and i'm still looking at the results for yesterday's date. i'll post more on that later, though. i have a large pile of other things that i've been putting off while trying to fix this.

Strange:

This is what I get:
# lspci
... (removed other devices)
0000:0b:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
# lsmod | grep ndis ndiswrapper 156336 0 (no ref from USB device as you have)
# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
netbc564 driver present, hardware present
# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:4B:BC:C9:F8
inet addr:192.168.1.95 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::290:4bff:febc:c9f8/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:194 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:199 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:116180 (113.4 KiB) TX bytes:33362 (32.5 KiB)
Memory:b0206000-b0207fff
#

in /etc/network/interfaces (where ESSID and security should be set)
# WLAN using ndiswrapper using dhcp daemon in WLAN router
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
pre-up modprobe ndiswrapper
post-down rmmod ndiswrapper

I could set loading module ndiswrapper in /etc/modules instead.

Now I need to write this as root to start WLAN (and stop)

# sudo ifup wlan0
# sudo ifdown wlan0

(This is Debian way)

I usally looks in log /var/log/messages /var/log/syslog /var/log/daemons /var/log/debug /var/log/kern.log when I have problems. It's one of Unix good things. Logg and config files is ordinary text files.

Good luck

lethargic1,

man, I'm out of ideas. It sounds like it's working sometimes and not working other times, which makes me think it's a hardware problem, not a configuration problem. once you get it all working, you can automate things by either adding the commands to /etc/rc.d/rc.local so they get executed at boot time, or put them into a little script that you can run whenever you want.

sorry I can't be of more help. If I can think of anything else, I'll post back and if you ever find a fix, please post it so maybe it'll help someone in the future.

Hi

I have had a similar incident last night, see post 'ndiswrapper modprobe help' in Suse forum thread 366858.

last night all was well having finally connected to wireless.

I then decided to use the connection to the rest of the world to update my Suse 9.2 install using YAST (online update).

One reboot later and

the command modprobe ndiswrapper fails on some kind of module config error?

I also tried the ndiswrapper -m one and got the same message as the post here.

code:modprobe already contains alias directive

How do I scrub this alias (whatever it is) and try a new one? Not sure if this will fix my problem but would greatly appreciate any thoughts....?!

Many thanks
Joe

Too many non-Slackware related hints in this thread...

Try adding this to /etc/rc.d/rc.modules
And put this in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf instead of the empty values (assuming you don't have a wired card configured, if you have one already in there, change all the [0] in the next code sample to [1] for instance):
And tell us if that made it come alive on reboot

Cheers, Eric

And also, my previous post will only help you on Slackware 10.2 and slackware-current... the network scripts in Slackware 10.2 are much more powerful than in earlier releases.

If you have non- 10.2 Slackware version, use the rc.inet1 and rc.wireless files from Slackware 10.2 that you can also find here as drop-in replacements for your current files. The *.conf files on that site are for reference, you don't need them but it does not hurt to download them and at least look at the new options that you can use for your cards - like the IFNAME[] variable and the WLAN_* variables.

Eric

Right I am back on wireless linux.
A couple of posts on this site helped.

First. This alias thing.

I found this in /etc/modprobe.d as file named ndiswrapper (funny enough)

All the file contained was one line : alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

If I deleted this file then running ndiswrapper -m would result in no error about an alias already being there and instead creates a new one.

This did not fix the problem though, when I ran modprobe ndiswrapper I would still get the message:

FATAL: could not open /lib/modules/2.6.8-24.18-default/extra/ndiswrapper.ko :invalid module format [whatever this is, a file i could not view]

deleting this gave the following result when re-running modprobe

FATAL: could not open /lib/modules/2.6.8-24.18-default/extra/ndiswrapper.ko :mo such file or directory

I restored the file from another one I found in a directory nearby, i forget which.

Also there was absolutely nothing in either modprobe.conf or modprobe.conf.local or modprobe.d in /etc except the alias above mentioned already - which seemed to be nothing to do with the error.

Anyway, what got the ndiswrapper module loaded was the following command

modprobe ndiswrapper --force-modversion

I have to say I dont know why this worked as it was just a hunch. Does anyone know what caused this and what is a better solution?

I found I had to enter my wireless name though, using the command

iwconfig wlan0 essid PLOVERNET to get back onto the net.

Hope this helps somebody out there........... Joe

Oops I meant to say on previous post I run version SUSE 9.2 Professional

You should prob. recompile ndiswrapper if you don't istall it from your distributions repository or if you made a kernel of your own. Kernel modules are dependent on kernel version (and c-kompalier et all).

This is a Slackware forum. Not Debian, not SuSE.

Eric

And?
My post still holds for any distribution (except file names, which have to be adjusted). Any change in kernel version NEEDS a new compiled ndiswrapper module.

Of course you and mcmorj are right (except that Slackware does not have a "/etc/modprobe.d/" directory, does not have a "repository" for software and ndiswrapper is not even part of Slackware), but you responded to a SuSE related problem. This is a Slackware forum.

Eric