Linksys WPC11 Version 4 802.11b wireless pcmcia adapter

shah1701 · 09-07-2004, 08:02 PM

Hi, I run Fedora Core 2 (kernel 2.6) on my IBM Thinkpad T23 laptop. I recently purchased a Linksys WPC11 PCMCIA 802.11b wireless card (version 4) and cannot figure out how to get it to work. I'm not the most competent Linux user, but I'm pretty good at getting things like video drivers to work, however this is really stumping me. I can't really get a soild answer...I have no clue if there is a driver for this thing. I paid more money for this card rather than a generic one because I figured there would be more support (guess not). Any ideas?
Thanks!

Hangdog42 · 09-07-2004, 08:31 PM

Welcome to LQ!

Unfortunately wireless and Linux is sort of a crap shoot. Some cards are extrememly well supported by their manufacturers and others, well, getting them to work can require everything short of animal sacrifice. Your card falls in the middle, but you should feel free to bitch to Linksys about their lack of Linux support. The first thing you need to do is find out what chipset your card is using. Check the output of lspci to find out. If there are native linux drivers, use those. Otherwise you may need to use either ndiswrapper or linuxant, which are programs that allow you to use the Windows drivers under Linux.

One of the next things you want to familiarize yoursefl with is the Search function here. Searching on the card name will bring up a lot of advice as your card is used by a number of people.

shah1701 · 09-20-2004, 09:32 PM

I got the card to work. I had to read a lot of stupid docs and go through about 4 hours of hell, but I hope this will help out other people. I couldn't get the Linux Realtek 8180L driver provided by Realtek to build. From what I can see in the makefile, it looks like it was designed for the 2.4 kernel (which is quite useless for Fedora Core 2).

I then tried ndiswrapper and got it to work. If you're not familiar with ndiswrapper, it is an open source project that allows you to use Windows XP drivers in Linux (i.e. it's a wrapper for the windows driver api). Of course it doesn't work for all drivers becaues it's in early stages of development...in fact the Windows XP Linksys WPC11 V4 driver will not work, rather you have to use Realtek's 8180L Windows driver (the Realtek 8180L is the chipset on the card).

In a nutshell these are the steps you want to take.

1.) Make sure PCMCIA packages are installed (they should be in most cases, otherwise get out of this thread and figure that out). You'll be able to tell if you see 'Starting PCMCIA' in the bootup screen and if at least the power light is on on the wireless card.

2.) Download ndiswrapper 0.10 http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...ease_id=262015

3.) Download the WINDOWS XP (NOT LINUX) Realtek 8180L driver
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...x?Keyword=8180

4.) Install ndiswrapper by doing the following:
a.) Unpack the gz file
b.) Type make install

5.) ndiswrapper is now installed. Now unzip the realtek driver file (3 files should be there, one called NET8180 .INF)

6.) Use ndiswrapper to load the Windows driver into memory by typing
ndiswrapper -i </path/to/NET8180.INF>

By the way, what happens here is that ndiswrapper copies the INF file as well as the other two files
into a new subdirectory located at /etc/ndiswrapper/net8180. If this doesn't happen, something
went wrong

7.) To see if it was succesful type ndiswrapper -l
You should see something along the lines of 'net8180 is present'

8.) Now type 'modprobe ndiswrapper'. This loads ndiswrapper in as a kernel module. This command
should yield no output. To Linux, there is no Realtek 8180L, there's just some device known as
ndiswrapper.

9.) Go into the Red Hat Menu, System Setting, then Network. Go to Add, then Wireless Devices,
then you should see at least two options. One says ndiswrapper, and the other says 'Other Devices'.
Choose ndiswrapper, use the default settings unless you know what you're doing, hit okay. Then
activate. You might need to restart pcmcia and network services (easiest way to do this is to restart the PC).

I think that should cover it. Check the output of the shell command 'dmesg' (this is the system log) to make sure wlan0 was started up okay. Alright, I'm running out of power. Good luck.

Harmonic · 09-22-2004, 06:02 PM

It Worked!!! kinda! I got the ndiswrapper going installed it and what not! The problem came when i tried to goto the network settings. I didnt find the second ndiswrapper option you spoke of. I gave the command iwconfig and it showed that I had a wireless connection at wlan0. Any ideas? Also interesting to note I cant delete the network settings that I input when i was trying out different drivers.

chidorex · 09-25-2004, 12:08 PM

Geez, I also almost got it to work. Thanks shah for your great post. It really helped me advance a lot. I have a Netgear MA521 that uses the same Realtek driver, so I used your post as a reference. The first thing I did that really helped me is upgrade my FC1 to Core 2.

However, I am the same stage as Harmonic: the Network setup utility does not show the ndiswrapper wireless device ('System Settings > Network > New > Wireless Connection').

The last lines of dmesg are the following:

Code:

ndiswrapper version 0.10 loaded (preempt=no,smp=no)
PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:00.0 (0000 -> 0003)
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:00.0 to 64
ndiswrapper: using irq 11
divert: allocating divert_blk for wlan0
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:09:5b:64:79:fb using driver rtl8180.sys
ndiswrapper device wlan0 supports WPA with AES/CCMP and TKIP ciphers
ndiswrapper: driver rtl8180.sys (Realtek,07/09/2004,5.170.0709.2004) added

My lspci -v shows

Code:

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8180L 802.11b MAC (rev 20)
        Subsystem: Netgear: Unknown device 4700
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at 4000
        Memory at 2f800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

the ndiswrapper command shows the installed driver

Code:

# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
net8180 hardware present

and iwconfig does show my wireless access point, well, I think...

Code:

lo        no wireless extensions.
 
sit0      no wireless extensions.
 
eth0      no wireless extensions.
 
wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Auto  Frequency:2.412GHz  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
          Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          RTS thr:2432 B   Fragment thr:2432 B
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-95 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

Does anybody have any ideas as to what I should try next?

Thanks a lot
Rex
(newbie of course)

RandallC · 09-27-2004, 07:59 PM

I'm at this point as well. I'm not sure what to do now

Any help out there?

Hangdog42 · 10-03-2004, 08:21 AM

It looks as if your setting the ESSID to any isn't working. You're not associating with an access point. Try setting the SSID to the real value and see if that does the trick.

shah1701 · 10-03-2004, 11:34 PM

I ran into the same problem. Wireless networks are identified by an ID called the SSID (service set identifier). This is also called the network ID for a wireless LAN. You need to have the SSID to get onto a WLAN. When you're in Windows, Windows is smart enough to probe all the nearby networks and pick the strongest SSID. You can also manually change it by double clicking on the the little network status icon in the system tray and choosing another SSID.

Of course in Linux (particularly FC2), the auto feature doesn't seem to work, so what you do is you manually set it. Go into your network settings and type in your network SSID. On cheap home routers, the default SSID tends to be along the lines of "Linksys" or "NETGEAR" depending on the brand. It's a wise idea to change the name so that it is unique especially if you live in an apartment like I do. If you want to do it using the command line, I think it's something along the lines of: iwconfig -wlan0 essid "YOURID". You can check the exact syntax by doing iwconfig --help or man iwconfig.

I haven't had time to figure out why it isn't working correctly. It is a big inconvenience as I move around a lot to various networks. That means if you go from your home to let's say a Starbucks, you have to manually type in the other SSID and restart the card.

Another problem I run into with Linux is that it takes a while sometimes to get a connect to a particular WLAN. This tends to be because of a difference in the channel. If you set the channel to the exact same channel the wireless router is outputting, you'll connect fast. I do believe Windows sort of keeps a record of which channel is optimal for every SSID. If you don't know much about data communications, wireless routers (in particular IEEE 802.11) broadcast frequencies at around 2.4 GHz. They split up this bandwidth into multiple channels (I believe around 11 for 802.11b). Multiple routers in a building can transmit at different channels to prevent interference and improve network efficency. Wireless cards tend to be smart enough to adjust to the correct channel, they're sometimes a little slow about it though...

Alright, hope that helps.

trjonescp · 10-16-2004, 04:23 PM

Thanks shah. I followed your steps and it worked perfectly on my Gentoo system (running 2.6.8 kernel).

mrmcctt · 10-21-2004, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by chidorex
Geez, I also almost got it to work. Thanks shah for your great post. It really helped me advance a lot. I have a Netgear MA521 that uses the same Realtek driver, so I used your post as a reference. The first thing I did that really helped me is upgrade my FC1 to Core 2.

However, I am the same stage as Harmonic: the Network setup utility does not show the ndiswrapper wireless device ('System Settings > Network > New > Wireless Connection').

The last lines of dmesg are the following:

Code:

ndiswrapper version 0.10 loaded (preempt=no,smp=no) PCI: Enabling device 0000:02:00.0 (0000 -> 0003) ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11 PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:00.0 to 64 ndiswrapper: using irq 11 divert: allocating divert_blk for wlan0 wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:09:5b:64:79:fb using driver rtl8180.sys ndiswrapper device wlan0 supports WPA with AES/CCMP and TKIP ciphers ndiswrapper: driver rtl8180.sys (Realtek,07/09/2004,5.170.0709.2004) added

My lspci -v shows

Code:

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8180L 802.11b MAC (rev 20) Subsystem: Netgear: Unknown device 4700 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11 I/O ports at 4000 Memory at 2f800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

the ndiswrapper command shows the installed driver

Code:

# ndiswrapper -l Installed ndis drivers: net8180 hardware present

and iwconfig does show my wireless access point, well, I think...

Code:

lo no wireless extensions. sit0 no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:off/any Mode:Auto Frequency:2.412GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00 Bit Rate:11Mb/s Tx-Power:20 dBm Sensitivity=0/3 RTS thr:2432 B Fragment thr:2432 B Encryption key:off Power Management:off Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-95 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

Does anybody have any ideas as to what I should try next?

Thanks a lot
Rex
(newbie of course)

I ran into the same problem. No ndiswrapper listed in the network settings. I ran ndiswrapper -m which gave this output "Adding "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.conf". I then ran the modprobe ndiswrapper and then went to the network settings. The ndiswrapper option was there.

Still working on the settings but I'm getting there. Hope this helps someone.

mrmcctt · 10-21-2004, 11:42 AM

Well, it works. The only thing I hate is when I fix something and I'm not really sure how I did it.

The network settings with WEP seemed to be my biggest hangup but I am now posting from Firefox 1.0PR on Fedora Core 2 from my Linksys WPC11 wireless adapter. WooHoo!!!!

(It's the small victories that mean so much)

Now on to my next fight. IE6 under Linux. (I know, I know.....My employers have an online timesheet that I have to fill out but so far it has only worked in IE).