LinuxQuestions.org - Wireless PCMCIA Card D-Link 650 Not Working on openSUSE 10.2

Hi there,

I'm using openSUSE 10.2 with a 2.6.18.2-34 kernel on an AMD Athlon machine. My problem: I'm a linux newbie and I'm trying to get the wireless network card D-Link DWL 650 PCMCIA going on my laptop. I have the pcmciautils package installed, as well as ndiswrapper. I'm logged in as root user.

Linux doesn't recognize the card by itself when I plug it in. It appears in the /sys/bus/pcmcia/devices/1.0 directory, but nothing else happens.

ifconfig gives me the following output:

Code:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:3F:B8:57:4A

          inet addr:172.16.26.243  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0

          inet6 addr: fe80::202:3fff:feb8:574a/64 Scope:Link

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:97106 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:5033 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

          RX bytes:13281643 (12.6 Mb)  TX bytes:735662 (718.4 Kb)

          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x4800



lo        Link encap:Local Loopback

          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0

          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1

          RX packets:130 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:130 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

          RX bytes:8476 (8.2 Kb)  TX bytes:8476 (8.2 Kb)

I tried it three ways but no success. Here is what I did:

1) ndiswrapper
Trying to install the D-Link Windows XP driver for the WiFi card, ndiswrapper says "invalid driver!" If I try to load the module nevertheless via

Code:

modprobe ndiswrapper

, the output is

Code:

FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found.

How could this happen? I'm sure ndiswrapper is installed properly, how can the module be missing?

2) linux-wlan-ng-0.2.8
Installing linux-wlan was not a problem. But after installation the README tells me to restart pcmcia with the command

Code:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart

. In fact, I don't have a pcmcia file in this location on my computer. There is a pcmcia file in /etc/sysconfig and in /usr/lib/scpm/resource_groups. But trying to restart them (/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia restart) the shell output is

Code:

bash: /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia: Permission denied

. So this obviously doesn't work. Is there a reason why I don't have the pcmcia thing where it should be?

As an alternative method for restarting pcmcia, the openSUSE wiki says I should use this command: rcpcmcia restart. Trying it, the output is

Code:

bash: rcpcmcia: command not found

(trying /sbin/rcpcmcia --> same problem). How can the rcpcmcia command be missing on my computer? Where could I get it? Is something wrong with my kernel?

3) cardctl ident
I hoped to get some information on my card with the cardctl command. Trying it, the shell tells me

Code:

bash: cardctl: command not found

. What package or the like do I have to install to get this thing running? What am I doing wrong?

Any help would be highly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!
Clemens