Using Internal Wi-Fi Card
 

Hi,

I have not been using Linux in a while as I came back to South Africa and the internet lines here can be very limited, so please bare with me.

I installed a external Belkin Wi-Fi Card a few years ago on a Debian system, but now I want to install my Dell Inspiron 5150's internal card. I want to get it working so I can hook it up with my Vista machine for internet sharing purposes. So I need help.

Am I right in saying that I need to install RT2500? I'm trying to do that, but I'm getting a "Error 1" when running make.

What is the command to get a report on attached hardware?

Thank you,
LonelyTraveler

The command that reports on installed pci devices is lspci. I too have a Dell Inspiron 5150 and I use ndiswrapper along with the Windows XP driver for that card.

As far as the make error... Do you have make installed? In most distros you have an option to install development tools. You should do so, that way you get all the devel tools and libraries needed to compile and install software.

I have make installed yes. Where did you get the Windows driver? I tried to pop in the Dell Driver CD, but couldn't get anything off it.

I found a linkthat has the Windoze driver on it, but it says its for the HP. Will it work on a Dell also? It should right? As its the same card.

I'm trying to install ndiswrapper now, but I'm getting a Error 2 when running make install. I managed to install ndiswrapper-utils from Synaptic, but thats not all I need right?

According to this page, Ubuntu comes with the necessary ndiswrapper module pre-installed, but it needs the ndiswrapper-utils package to get it working, which is what I did. Do I need anything else?

Might be worth saying that I'm running Ubuntu 5.04. I'm waiting for the upgraded CD to come in the mail.

LonelyTravelor,

I usually compile ndiswrapper myself so I'm not sure what to expect with prebuilt packages on Ubuntu. If the ndiswrapper and ndiswrapper-utils packages are all you need, then try loading the windows driver by doing "ndiswrapper -i <path to .inf file>"

And to answer your earlier question, yes the driver should work on the same chipset regardless on what brand name is on the outside of your pc case. Anyways try that ndiswrapper command I suggested and afterwards do "ndiswrapper -l" to see if ndiswrapper sees and recognizes your device.

The Windoze driver that this website points me to is an .exe file. I can't find a .inf file. I tried running the ndiswrapper command with the .exe file but it tells me the ndiswrapper command is not found. So I guess I do need that ndiswrapper installation, but when trying to make I get a error 2 message.

You'll need to extract the contents with anything that will handle a zip file, the *.inf file is inside the *.exe.

Thanks Elliot, but it doesn't want to work. I tried unzip ~.exe but it tells me it can't zipfile directory.

I just downloaded the R83097.exe driver listed 5150 card and unzipped it myself, worked fine.

Strange. I'm gonna download cabextract and see if that works.

Fantastic! I got it unzipped with cabextract and got the wifi card installed too. But now, I can't see my network. I make a network from my Vista PC called Vista and when I search on Ubuntu with iwlist scan, it tells me no scan results. Any idea why that is? The other XP computer in the house can see it.

Any ideas anyone? I'm so fed up now! Been trying for hours!

try running:

watch 'iwlist wlan0 scanning'


This will rerun the command every 2 seconds. The problems is that iwlist watches for transmitted beacons to detect wifi networks. You might just be missing the beacons due to timing differences between windows linux. I honestly don't know enough about Vista to be able to troubleshoot it.

Nope. No joy. There is a XP connection running in the house too, but can's see it from Linux.

Just some details. Don't know if this will help:

Try running "dhclient wlan0"

if that doesn't work trying manually setting the config for your wireless card. For example do

iwconfig wlan0 essid "your network name"
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 channel 6 (or change to whatever channel your access point is transmitting on)

For more options just do "man iwconfig" and play with some of the setting and see what happens. Write down whatever setting you change and post them here so we can continue to help you diagnose this.

I'm trying to connect via my other laptop. Does this still count as a access point? How do I know what channel it is transmitting on?