Fedora 12 Ndiswrapper installation problem
 

I've installed the ndiswrapper packages from the repositories used in this guide in order to make ndiswrapper work on my laptop, but following the instructions also in that guide, changed only for my own wireless card's driver instead, at the point it says to run:
It returns:
And I cannot continue.
I've done nothing different to the guide, except, as said, to change the drivers to the one I have to use for my card.

I don't understand why it's doing this. The card in question, if it matters, is a Netgear WG511v2 (Marvell Techologies chipset, so no native driver).

Thanks in advance.

Can you post previous command's outputs, please.

Because we need to understand what was before "modprobe ndiswrapper"

They're listed in the linked to Fedora guide in the first post.

Google: "Fedora 12 Module ndiswrapper not found"

Contrary to popular belief, I am not stupid, and like usual when faced with a problem, Google is the FIRST port of call, this being the last if I haven't found a useful solution that works.

Hi

I don't think the guide that you used included a "# ndiswrapper -m" command, which loads ndiswrapper into /etc/modules. In Debian, my /etc/modules has three lines:
loop
sbp2
ndiswrapper

I also have one line in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper:
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

Do you have a directory: /etc/ndiswrapper? Mine contains a .sys file, a .inf file and various .conf files.

Do you have pcmcia module loaded. Try lsmod....

Also you might want to check which version of ndiswrapper you have, I am using 1.55. Furthermore this page may be of interest: http://www.angelfire.com/linux/hardwire/problems.html

Hope this helps

the ndiswrapper -m command has been suggested to me before, and has had no change on the result.
The line you have in ndiswrapper.conf is for me, in /etc/modprobe.conf, because it was suggested that it might solve the problem.
The ndiswrapper version is 1.54 , from the rpmfusion-free repository.

Have you seen: http://www.angelfire.com/linux/hardwire/problems.html ??

I presume that lsmod doesn't show ndiswrapper. Any joy with pcmcia? Since I believe your card is a pccard.

You are correct, lsmod does not show ndiswrapper at all.
I have seen that page, the only part which appears to help is the 3rd in the ndiswrapper problems.
That section suggests to me that I will have to compile it myself, something I am unable, and unwilling to do myself, because the computer isn't all that powerful, and would probably have a heart attack if I asked it to compile anything, let alone that I know next to nothing about how to compile ndiswrapper.

can you run: locate ndiswrapper ?

Mine returns amoungst many others:
/lib/modules/2.6.26-2-amd64/misc/ndiswrapper.ko

Your kernel name is no doubt up in the 30's

whereis ndiswrapper returns:
I'm uncertain as to how to find the current kernel version in use.

The following is the INSTALL instructions from ndiswrapper-1.55.tar.gz:

The instructions below explain how to install ndiswrapper. This is
rather short version; more details about installation,
troubleshooting, FAQ etc. can be found in the Wiki at

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki

Prerequisites
=============

You need a recent kernel, at least 2.6.16, with header files for the
kernel. Make sure there is a link to the kernel source from the modules
directory. The command

ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build

should have at least 'include' directory and '.config' file.

Downloading
===========

Download the latest version of the ndiswrapper sources from here and
extract it with the command

tar zxvf ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz

This will create ndiswrapper-version directory. Change to that
directory and run

make uninstall
make

Login as root and run
make install

Install Windows driver
======================

If this is the first time you install ndiswrapper, you need to install
Windows driver for Windows XP (in some cases Windows NT or Windows
2000 may also work). First, get a Windows driver that is known to
work. See http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki/List for status
about the device for which you are installing Windows driver. For
this, you need to identify device ID with

lspci -n

if it is PCI device or

lsusb

if it is USB device.

Then lookup in that List for the device ID and if a driver is known to
work, get that driver. Occassionally, Windows driver on the CD or your
Windows partition may work, but if it doesn't, don't complain - get a
known-to-work driver.

Many Windows drivers are distributed either as zipped files or cab
files. Zipped files, even if they are .exe files, can be extracted
with 'unzip' in Linux; cab files can be extracted with combination of
'cabextract' and 'unshield' programs.

Once the driver has been unpacked, locate .inf and .sys files. If
necessary, move these files so both .inf and .sys are in the same
directory. Some drivers also come with firmware files, such as
fwrad16.bin etc. These files also should be in the same
directory. Then install the Windows driver with

ndiswrapper -i driver.inf

This installs .inf file and required .sys and .bin files. Now, see if
installation of Windows driver is "valid" with

ndiswrapper -l

This should report

"driver present, hardware present"

for the driver installed and if that driver is for the device that is
already in the system. If device is not present, it should report

"driver present"

If not, the Windows driver has not been installed properly.

Now load ndiswrapper module with

modprobe ndiswrapper

If everything worked properly, this should initialize 'wlan0' wireless
device, which can be configured with wireless tools, such as
'iwconfig', 'wpa_supplicant' etc.

I have two problems before even attempting that - I don't know how to find the kernel version in use, and I don't know how to make the link mentioned near the start, since it doesn't exist on my system.

Did you try the locate command that I suggested? The whereis command only returns the directories that include the ndiswrapper name.

Look at /boot/ and you will see what kernel is loading. Or type uname -r in a terminal

Locate ndiswrapper returns:
I don't know if that's useful.

The kernel version reported to me from the uname command is:
2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE