BELKIN F5D7010 wireless cardbus RedHat 9

TurboChicken · 08-08-2004, 04:26 PM

ok after much MUCH searching for an answer for this i am almost to the point of giving up.

i have a laptop and a desktop. desktop is running .... /me hides .... windoze XP ... and laptop is running redhat 9 with a Belkin wireless CardBus 54g F5D7010.

i have seen a couple of things around about "ndiswrapper". so i downloaded... compiled.... ran ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf (with the drivers fromt he OEM CD)

it said what is should say... about media present.

so i ran modprobe ndiswrapper.

this is where the problem occur....

Kernel Panic: Aiee, Killing interrupt handler!
in interrupt handler - not syncing

and then everything freezes... after hearing that linux is the most stable operating system around and that it never need restarted... i am scared that i have done impossible and crashed linux!

i have repeated the process many times. and got the same problem.

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG????

i would really appreciate any help you can give

Hangdog42 · 08-09-2004, 07:48 AM

Dang, thats ugly. What kernel version are you running?

TurboChicken · 08-09-2004, 01:22 PM

if i am right (i am a bit of a newb) it's 2.4.20-8

does that sound right?

thanks
turbochicken

Hangdog42 · 08-09-2004, 05:23 PM

I've been doing a little reading around here on your kernel panic error message and from what I can tell, it suggests that a module is being loaded at the wrong time. When you get this message, is the card already plugged in? If so, try booting without the card plugged in, then plug it in (note I'm assuming that this is a PCMCIA card. If it is internal, ignore this).

The kernel version is probably OK, though I have seen some references that kernels earlier than 2.4.22 can have trouble with some cards. Since Red Hat has discontinued support of RH9, if you want to upgrade you may have to compile your own kernel.

TurboChicken · 08-10-2004, 02:23 PM

okay well the error occurs when i'm actually trying the driver install... not while booting... it's basically when i type the modprobe thing...

as for the kernel... if you can direct me in the direction of something that will show me how to do it then i will try that.

thanks in advance

Hangdog42 · 08-10-2004, 04:17 PM

Well, the best guides I know of are here in the Slackware forum. Check out the sticky threads at the top by DaOne. I've also summarized DaOne's procedures at my site You can get kernel sources from kernel.org . Note that kernel compiling is a bit of a jump for a newbie so don't be afraid to ask for help.

Hangdog42 · 08-10-2004, 07:39 PM

If you haven't compiled a kernel yet, don't start. There are some rumors that the 0.9 version of ndiswrapper is causing kernel panics. Try version 0.7 before you do anything else.

TurboChicken · 08-11-2004, 07:09 AM

okay i downloaded 0.7 (and i got further this time) and i did the same...

ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
installing...

ndiswrapper -l
hardware present

modprobe ndiswrapper
(returned nothing)

iwconfig

lo ethernet not present

wlan0 blah blah (loads of writing which suggests that wlan0 is the one to use)

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
(this returned nothing in the console window or in the dmesg file)

iwconfig wlan0 essid laptop
(again returned nothing)

ifconfig wlan0 up
(again nothing in the console window and no connecting light on the wireless card)

am i missgin something???

Hangdog42 · 08-11-2004, 07:25 AM

Actually it looks like it is behaving. At any time you can enter the command iwconfig wlan0 to see if your changes have been accepted by the card. You can also use lsmod to see if the ndiswrapper module has loaded.

Once you've configured your card with iwconfig, you need to request an IP address from your router. With RH, the command is dhclient, so enter dhclient wlan0 and hopefully you will get an IP address and can surf away. Otherwise you can assign a static IP address with ifconfig

ifconfig wlan0 1.2.3.4 and replace 1.2.3.4 with the IP you want to use

If you use a static IP, you'll also need to use this (dhclient does this for you so don't do it if you get an IP from dhclient):

route add default gw RouterIPaddress

To set your gateway to your router.

TurboChicken · 08-11-2004, 07:43 AM

hmmmm it doesn't seem to be accepting the essid when i input it.

i did iwconfig wlan0 and in the essid section it says...
essid: ""

the command i used to do it was
iwconfig wlan0 essid laptop

i don't know whether this is a problem but it is an Ad-Hoc network... as in peer to peer?

the other computer is running *cough* windoze *cough*

but when both machines were on windoze it worked fine???

TurboChicken · 08-11-2004, 08:04 AM

fixed it.... i can ping my main comp.... just in case anyone else has the same problem....

iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc

that is what you need if it's a peer to peer network...

i got a message /sbin/dhclient-script wlan0 not configured so i set the other things manually as handdog suggested

and if you have problems connecting to the net then go to the system setting and network and add in the dns tab the primary dns as your router

hope this helps anyone else who has a problem...

TurboChicken · 08-11-2004, 02:10 PM

i have come across another problem.... the card seems to only be allowing 1Mb/s when the card is 54g...

Code:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"laptop"
          Mode:Ad-Hoc  Frequency:2.462GHz  Cell: 66:B7:E2:31:9E:25
          Bit Rate:1Mb/s   Tx-Power:14 dBm
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          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:26890   Missed beacon:0

is there something i am not setting???

Hangdog42 · 08-11-2004, 05:01 PM

Well, iwconfig has a rate setting, you could try messing with that. Check out the iwconfig man page for what kind of values you can use, but basically something like iwconfig wlan0 rate 11M may speed things up.

Also, if there are any 802.11b cards in the network, the whole thing will operate at 11b speeds, not 11g.