Hello all,

Apologies for a very newbie question, but I am a newbie when it comes to wireless! I have a Toshiba Satellite M100 laptop, with Atheros AR5006EG wireless adaptor. As far as I can tell, this is a mini-pci card. After much digging, I found the driver that WinXP uses for this card, copied them over to my Linux partition, and "installed" them using ndiswrapper.

My question is, how do I know set up to get on the network? I am trying to connect to my university wireless network, that requires no authentication (I did have to register my network card, but I don't have to enter a WPA key or anything like that). I have tried to use kWiFiManager. The first time I hit the "Scan for networks" button, it detected the network but told me I had zero signal strength (not possible - I sit directly under a reciever, and WinXP gives me full signal strength). Subsequent pushes of "Scan for networks" tells me no networks are detected.

I assume this has something to do with my configuration. iwconfig reports that I have a wlan0, but with values of everything set to zero, except for Frequency and Bit Rate.

Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated.

Thanks,

That is not that uncommon. You're using an XP driver in Linux, which is just not a natural state of affairs, so not everything gets reported.

Setting up the network should be pretty easy with iwconfig. Since you have an unsecured network, you should just need to set the SSID of the access point you use:

iwconfig wlan0 essid TheSSIDHere

If that takes, then you just need to request an IP address by using ifup wlan0.

By the way, the MadWifi project creates native linux drivers for Atheros chipsets. I would bet that there are Fedora RPMs for that driver, and odds are it would work better than ndiswrapper.

Hangdog,

Sorry for the delay, things have been rather hectic. some further points from your suggestions:

ifup wlan0 reports something like "No configuration for wlan0" - Is this expected?
iwconfig lets me change things, but they dont seem to "take".
If, using kwifimanager, I click on the network detected, and set WEP key to "off" manually, and then try to "Switch to network", I get a dialogue requesting the root password. I give it, and then watch everything hang. I mean everything. Trying to hard reboot, the reboot then constantly stops and restarts at "Starting udev", and I have to use the rescue CD's to get the system back up.

Any thoughts?

If I were in your shoes, I would have a look through your log files and see if ndiswrapper is leaving any clues. That said, it sounds suspiciously like the infamous 4K stack problem. Fedora stock kernels frequently have a 4K stack, which isn't enough space for a lot of the Windows drivers that ndiswrapper uses. If you compiled ndiswrapper from source, you may have gotten some warnings about this.

About the only thing I can suggest is to try a different kernel. The NTFS kernels usually are a good bet to work.

Hangdog,

Thanks for the quick reply. I have downloaded a 16K stack kernel from linuxant, and will give that a shot after checking the log files tonight. I will report back regardless of the outcome.

Thanks for your help,

Hangdog,

Alas, no luck so far. Using a 16K stack kernel did get rid of the hanging problem, and did seem to get me one step closer, my connection at least being reported as Ad-Hoc by kwifimanager. It would also let me "Switch to network", but that isn't much good with a signal strengh of zero! Nearly everything seems to be there, but I just can't establish a connection.

I also tried out the madwifi drivers. Everything seemed to go well, but dmesg reports that it is unable to attach hardware, and the the Hardware revision is not supported (HAL status 13). So it seems I am stuck with using ndiswrapper for this card.

Also, when using the ndiswrapper, trying "ifup wlan0" reported "no configuration found for wlan0". Do I have to build this configuration somehow?

If you have any last ditch suggestions, I would love to hear them (apart from "Buy a new card!"). I might keep pushing things around and see where I get when I have some time.

Thanks,

I'm not familiar with the Fedora GUI tools, but in a console you should (must) be able to configure the card with iwconfig. That means setting the ssid and WEP key. Just getting the driver up and running doesn't do the trick, you have to enter the appropriate settings for the access point you're using. If you're stuck, post the output of iwconfig and we'll go from there.

I'm no expert, but the fact that you keep getting "no configuration found for wlan0" suggests to me that ndiswrapper isn't loading properly at bootup.

Try "lsmod | grep ndiswrapper" from a root terminal to see if the ndiswrapper module is loading at bootup. If it isn't, you may have to edit a config file to have it load. On my distro, that file is /etc/rc.d/rc.local, not sure what it will be for you.

If ndiswrapper is loading OK, have you aliased it to wlan0 using:
"ndiswrapper -m"?

tskears and Hangdog,
Firstly, sorry for taking so long to respond. I have been tied up with work, and just trying to eliminate anything obvious to do with this problem.

Well picked tskears, the module is not being loaded at bootup. What did you have to change in /etc/rc.d/rc.local to get this module loaded? The only entry that I have relating to this is:

dhcpcd wlan0

However, if I manually load the module with modprobe ndiswrapper, some interesting stuff happens. There are some things that I think that are relevant to the problem that I will list here, apologies if they seem a bit random. I will try and be concise.

1. iwconfig reports the following for wlan0

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 20
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 19.
Some things may be broken...
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"Monash-Wireless-Net"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:14:F2:FC:EA:E0
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

2. Then, after using kwifimanager, running "Scan for networks", selecting the appropriate one, setting "WEP key" to "off", clicking "Switch to Network", and entering the root password at the prompt (phew!), iwconfig reports the following:

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 20
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 19.
Some things may be broken...

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"Monash-Wireless-Net"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:14:F2:FC:EA:E0
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0/100 Signal level:-45 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

Note that I suddenly seem to have signal (and a high enough signal according to my Uni website)

3. After running "vpnclient_init start", iwconfig contains the following:

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 20
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 19.
Some things may be broken...

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"Monash-Wireless-Net"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:14:F2:FC:EA:E0
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0/100 Signal level:-39 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

cipsec0 no wireless extensions.

Note the extra entry for cipsec0. I assume this is a device created by the cisco client. Does anybody know enough about vpn to explain this to me?

4. Attempting to start the vpnclient with "vpnclient connect myprofile", I get the following message:

Cisco Systems VPN Client Version 4.8.00 (0490)
Copyright (C) 1998-2005 Cisco Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Client Type(s): Linux
Running on: Linux 2.6.17-1.2157_FC5.stk16smp #1 SMP Mon Jul 17 18:56:16 EDT 2006 i686
Config file directory: /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient

Initializing the VPN connection.
Secure VPN Connection terminated locally by the Client
Reason: Unable to resolve server address.
There are no new notification messages at this time.

So, I am still a bit stuck with where to go. I guess the first thing to do is at least get the ndiswrapper module loading at bootup. Any advice on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.
I feel like this is nearly resolved, I just need some pointers on what tools to use, with regard to establishing a connection and configuring.

Thanks,

The Cisco VPN client does add another interface, as you noted.

Try using the exact path to the profile (in my case, vpnclient connect /etc/CiscoSystemsVPNClient/Profiles/myprofile

Going back to a few posts ago, did you ever get ifup wlan0 to work? Because now you have your interface up, ifup will use DHCP to get you a connection.

Do you have an 'ifcfg-wlan0' file in /eyc/sysconfig/network-scripts? This give ifup the configuration options for wlan0. An example one for your setup might/should look something like this:

I'm not on my Fedora system at the moment so I can't check and could therefore be talking complete nonsense (Debian does things differantly) but it's worth a try!

Fedora seems to have several ways to do it. This thread discusses several options.
You're probably going to want to fix this. Basically it means that the wireless extenstions in the kernel your using are newer than your wirless tools package. I'd search a Fedora RPM repository for the newest wireless tools available. Otherwise you can download the source code from here. You might have to go to the latest beta to get the error to go away.

To all who have helped with this problem,

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou! I am finally posting this reply over my Uni wireless network, on my laptop! What a relief. It seems that what was required was to add the file 'ifcfg-wlan0' to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts as suggested by crazyjimbo. This seems to have allowed the ndiswrapper to load at bootup, and to let me use ifup. VPN also works fine (as long as I remember to connect as root).

Hangdog, The error mentioned by iwconfig seems not to cause me any hassles - yet. I will download the source code as you have suggested. Also, thanks again for your patience and suggestions.

I think I will just spend the day web surfing (wireless, of course!).

Thanks again everyone,

I'm a Linux noobee, but I've used Mac OS X (terminal knowledge here) and Windows for a long time.

I am trying to get the Atheros AR5006EG working on Ubuntu. I saw found this page, and tried installing the ndiswrapper from instructions here:

ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Ubuntu

ndiswrapper is installed, but I can't figure out the step to find the Windows driver for ndiswrapper.

Leontini, can you please let me know how exactly you did this?

Thanks!

Check the ndiswrapper wiki for your card make/model and see what drivers they suggest using. They almost always give download locations. Otherwise, you can try drivers from the card manufacturers website.

Also, in case you didn't know, Atheros chipsets are supported by the madwifi linux drivers.