I'm trying to load the drivers for a wireless usb on 10rc1.

I am following the instructions on ndiswrapper installation and have found the drivers and
used the command ndiswrapper -l which confirms that the drivers are installed and hardware found.

I am stuck at the command

modprobe ndiswrapper

which is supposed to load the module but I get the error
Fatal: Module ndiswrapper not found

Anyone help at this point, the installation says this is a simple command but stuck here?

Has the module been installed?
ls -l /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/ndiswrapper*

Did you get any errors during the installation?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by david_ross
[B]Has the module been installed?
ls -l /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/ndiswrapper*

No errors on installation and I'm using SuSE10rc1
there is no directory /lib/modules/`uname -r`/in this version.

The command does work on Mandrake 10.2 but doesn't on SuSE.

check that ndiswrapper has been installed (should be on one of the CD's).

If you installl the KDE-ADMIN package you can use kpackage which is a nice easy way of interrogating what's been installed.

after it's installed then do your modprobe

finally don't forget to add it to the list of module loaded on boot via YAST --there's loads of posts on this topic on this forum --just use the search facility.

Don't forget also you'll need to install your windows drivers

(ndiswrapper -i /directory-name/windows.inf file)


cheers

-K

Done all that

That's the problem at
I have tried a usb wireless and a pci wireless with different chipsets I still get stuck at

modprobe ndiswrapper

the command doesn't work and
I'm not sure there is not a bug in 10rc1- x86-64
I'm trying it now on the 32bit version unless someone can say if there is a directory problem, or something to resolve it.

Hi, First thing with modprobe (I found) was to ensure you are root.
As I am a Linux Noob this took me ages to figure out!
so at the shell type 'su' - super user, then the root password.
then try the command.
I have to say even when the command does work it only got me a little further along.
I still cannot get wireless working.
In my case modprobe did not like the version of ndiswrapper in SUSE 9.3 Pro so I had to locate a newer version.
I think I have done likewise with iwconfig as that didn't like anything much either.
I have got it to the point where iwconfig shows the wlan0 with the various settings of the card, speed, SSID etc.
However the most I have been able to do is get it to ping itself!!
Nothing I have tried in YAST has got it working.
Getting wireless to work on Linux has been a nightmare for me and it's not over yet!
Sorry my post could not be more promising and hope you get further than I have!
Joe

it sounds like you put uname -r in quotes rather than backticks.

It should just expand to the kernel number - just make sure the ndiswrapper module is in the misc directory - if it isn't then try recompiling and installing it.

Appears the problem is in the 10rc1 x86_64 unless someone has a clue.

I have been able to make the wrapper work to a degree on the 32 bit 10rc1
where the command works OK., but iwconfig still fails to list 3 of 4 cards after modprobe succeeds.

Maybe the ndiswrapper doesn't work in the 64 bit environment.

So far I have not been able to get the ndiswrapper to work on 3 different cards.
pci, pcmcia and usb all with different chipsets.

Even when the modprobe ndiswrapper command works iwconfig fails to show the wlan0 entry.

The unsuccesful were
Atheros chipset pci card TL-560 TP-Link
Texas chipset pcmcia card WL1000 Binatone
TP-Link usb wireless

The only wireless (pcmcia) I could get working is when the card is detected in the yast - Network and this is with a
very old pcmcia card (Skylone).

Had hoped that wireless had progressed since 9.1 but still no luck with SuSE. Most of the cards mentioned are auto found with Mandrake 10.2.

Ok I have been spending another evening hacking away and nowhere along the road. As far as I can tell, the wireless does not find the access point - which according to man for iwconfig - means a configuration error. I suspect that YAST just does not do the whole job of configuring my card. It is frustrating to be so close and not get connected!
I have also tried running with no encryption and that has made no difference.
I have tried removing the config completely from YAST and trying (in my limited way) to configure manually.
Trawling through the net suggests that my card is supported by ndiswrapper and should work fine, but no luck.
All the lights are on but no-one seems to be home!
Looking at when Linux shutsdown, it shows wlan0 but says 'no configuration found but shutting down anyway'. Has anyone any ideas (for a relative noob) on what I could do? I just can't believe it is this hard to get a link...

YAST won't detect the Wireless cards --the whole point of NDISWRAPPER is that you have to use the WINDOWS drivers so NDISWRAPPER won't work for more than 1 (ONE) card at a time.

Ndiswrapper on SUSE pro 9.3 IS stable.

Assuming you've got it installed do the following

1) copy your WINDOWS drivers for the card you want to use to a directory say /windrivers --these will normally be 2 files one xxxxx.inf and the other xxxx.sys -- use the Winxp version or if you don't have those the windows 2000 version. Don't bother with windows NT stuff --it usually doesn't work.

2) insert your card

3) now you have to let ndiswrapper know the windows driver you are using

so type (as root) ndiswrapper -i /windrivers/xxxx.inf where /windrivers is the directory where you loaded the driver files to and xxxx.inf is the name of the windows driver .inf file (you need the .sys file as well but ndiswrapper will load this automatically )

3) check that the windows driver is loaded by typing ndiswrapper -l

you should see something like ndiswrapper xxxxx hardware detected where xxxx is the name of the windows .inf file (without the .inf)

if you can't load the driver because ndiswrapper thinks there is one already loaded then remove it with ndiswrapper -e drivername (you might need to do this at step 3 if you couldn't install the driver)

4) now try modprobe ndiswrapper

if this works you should be able to see if your wireless card is detected with IWCONFIG


Note --we haven't finished yet - at this stage we aren't quite 100% ready for wireless networking .

You need to do the 2 following things

1) go into YAST ===>system===>etc/sysconfig editor===>system==>kernel

2) select modules_loaded_on_boot

3) add ndiswrapper

Niow also edit your etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan0 (or create one if it doesn't exist) with your wireless stuff --I've posted an example elsewhere on this board --just do a search as I can't remembert the exact post but I've got a complete config file.

Now re-boot.

You might (dep[ending on your card) have to remove and insert it again to start it after a re-boot -- nine works automatically (Linksys wpc54g card)

Cheers

-k

reply to 1 Kyle

4) now try modprobe ndiswrapper

if this works you should be able to see if your wireless card is detected with IWCONFIG

this is the point of contention perhaps?

On occasions I get the error failed can't find ndiswrapper when actually in the directory.
On other machine 32 bit it accepts the command but nothing is detected in iwconfig.

Can I take it it is at this point that the ndiswrapper is the problem not the method?
Surely the ndiswrapper should give a warning of NO GO! this would help sort the number of requests for help and repeated attempts at repetition.

Do you know the chipset command that gives the wireless chipset?

I also have another card pcmcia which connects via the wireless over the ap and to the adsl router but still cannot access the net. I feel Suse10rc1 is the problem here with it's everything denied policy. I used Yast route and got the ug listed in route but still no access to the web. I have rebooted thinking it's a dhcp problem but still cannot get any sites except those on the local lan?

Thanks Kyle and Barry thai
I think the bit I need to do is the
Niow also edit your etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan0 (or create one if it doesn't exist) with your wireless stuff
as everything else works, modprobe starts and the
iwconfig shows the wlan0 cards with all the wireless settings.
I will try and post the response. Many thanks . Joe

Hi everyone -- don't forget that when using x_64 a MEGA problem is that there are VERY FEW 64 bit HARDWARE WINDOWS drivers available yet --so when using ndiswrapper to load your Windows drivers these will probably be using the existing 32 bit drivers.

Now Windows (64 bit) probably has all sorts of code in it to have some backward compatability with 32 bit apps -- but hardware is another problem. However Windows is likely to have some places where some type of API call might work -- I don't know anything about Windows internals so this is just a "guess" on my part.

I would suspect that using the 32 Bit Windows drivers on a Linux x_64 system written specifically for 64 bit operation probably would be a total gamble -- it might or might not work --probably not.

I suspect you'll need a 64 Bit Ndiswrapper (probably) but definitely the 64 bit hardware drivers -- and hope that the calls are the same.

Cheers

-K

I have had another thrash as this infernal wireless lan malarcky. It is hellish when you have no LAN connection at all and have to keep reverting to windows to go getting stuff from the web and writing this up but never mind.

There is some more progress.

First - good old SUSE YAST2 or whatever damnable contraption it is that configures the network has it's own thoughts on what it should be doing.

when modprobe ndiswrapper is run, iwconfig command shows me the data - with the name wlan0

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension,
but has been compiled with version 16, therefore some driver features
may not be available...

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSIDff/any Nickname:"giga"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:3E79-42AC-8C Security mode:restricted
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-10 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

So first thing is what do i do about the warning?

second you can see the accesspoint is all zeroes which iwconfig man helpfully says there is probably a configuration problem. However the card is alive and sees a signal even it is does not want to connect.

ifconfig similarly shows

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:30:BD:F9:37:60
inet6 addr: fe80::230:bdff:fef9:3760/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Memory:dffbe000-dffbffff

Nothing at this point is working so I have another try at configuring through YAST.
1st thing is looking at what yast dumps in the /etc/sysconfig/network directory the naming convention changes. So I had a hell of a job figuring out how to ensure yast configured a file named ifcfg-wlan0 and not ifcfg-wlan-wlan0 which did not match the wlan0 name in iwconfig.

anyway yes I also tried to manually create a file along the lines already discussed in this thread and again no success. I gave up on DHCP config and tried manually assigning an IP address. YAST warned me that any ip address i entered was already in use. I plumped for 2.187.0.70 anyway.

I came across another command in man named if (up) (down) (status) and so ran ifstatus wlan0 - and this appeared.

giga:/etc/sysconfig/network # ifstatus wlan0
wlan0 device: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
wlan0 dhcpcd is still waiting for data
Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension,
but has been compiled with version 16, therefore some driver features
may not be available...

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSIDff/any Nickname:"giga"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:3E79-42AC-8C Security modepen
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-10 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

giga:/etc/sysconfig/network # ifstatus wlan0
wlan0 device: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
wlan0 is up
5: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast qlen 1000
link/ether 00:30:bd:f9:37:60 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 2.187.0.70/24 brd 2.187.0.255 scope global wlan0
inet6 fe80::230:bdff:fef9:3760/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
wlan0 IP address: 2.187.0.70/24
Configured routes for interface wlan0:
default 2.187.0.1 - -
169.254.0.0 - 255.255.0.0 wlan0
Active routes for interface wlan0:
2.187.0.0/24 proto kernel scope link src 2.187.0.70
169.254.0.0/16 scope link
default via 2.187.0.1
1 of 2 configured routes for interface wlan0 up
Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension,
but has been compiled with version 16, therefore some driver features
may not be available...

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSIDff/any Nickname:"giga"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:3E79-42AC-8C Security mode:restricted
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-10 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

giga:/etc/sysconfig/network # ping 2.187.0.70
PING 2.187.0.70 (2.187.0.70) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 2.187.0.70: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.081 ms
64 bytes from 2.187.0.70: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from 2.187.0.70: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.062 ms

--- 2.187.0.70 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.058/0.067/0.081/0.010 ms
giga:/etc/sysconfig/network # ping 2.187.0.1
PING 2.187.0.1 (2.187.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 2.187.0.70: icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 2.187.0.70 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 2.187.0.70 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
From 2.187.0.70 icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable

--- 2.187.0.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 received, +4 errors, 100% packet loss, time 3999ms
, pipe 3
giga:/etc/sysconfig/network #

So there are my questions if anyone can help : .................................

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension,
but has been compiled with version 16, therefore some driver features
may not be available... what can I do about this?

Where on earth is it getting the following config from - 164 ip addr? (from ifstatus with static ip not DHCP)

Configured routes for interface wlan0:
default 2.187.0.1 - -
169.254.0.0 - 255.255.0.0 wlan0
Active routes for interface wlan0:
2.187.0.0/24 proto kernel scope link src 2.187.0.70
169.254.0.0/16 scope link
default via 2.187.0.1
1 of 2 configured routes for interface wlan0 up

I have to conclude that the wireless part seems to be still the failing element, as at least I can get through yast to the point I can ping myself (2.187.0.70) static IP if nothing else.

One other little piece of advice is I have given up on not being root when I try any of this, I do not wait for the su prompt as earlier work was severely impeded because I still do not know the security implications for Linux. I am logged in as root for all this configuration activity.

Hope I can finally get this standalone linux pc finally talking to the world - its been months and I am damned if I am trailing 40 feet of cat5 cable around my house!!

thanks Joe

The first thing that seems strange here is your IP addresses (assuming it's a home network).

Normal IP addresses when going through a router (whether "Wired" via a LAN or using a Wireless card) are 192.168.x.x rather than 2.x.x.x

check that your router is configured properly and while testing switch off all firewalls / routing info.

iwconfig -scan should give you what your card is finding.

I'd switch off all encryption etc etc --ignore the warnings you got in your code above.

Also once the wlan0 interface is up --check the ESSID is correct and remove and re-insert the card --this sometimes fixes it.

You should be able to ping the router.

If this works but you still can't get on to the net try using fixed IP addresses --you'll have to get the DNS IP addresses from your Internet ISP / cable company.

Once this all starts working then try and get DHCP (allocated IP addresses).

Then you can add the encryption keys and firewalls --but it's good to start with these OFF --extra complications you don't want when just trying to get the basic setup working.

Incidently UNCLICK the box Get Host name from DHCP -- keep that as whatever you want e.g redsquirrel.site

Cheers

-K