Hey peeps,

I have been messing around with Suse 9.1 professional for the past few days. It seems like the ideal distro for a noob like me. I really like the features and benifits it buys me over Mandrake or RedHat.

Anyway, I have been fighting my wlan0 interface for a couple of days now. I've been all over this site and cannot find someone with my same card/problem.

I snapped up a Linksys WPC54GS (speedbooster version of the WPC54G). Next I installed ndiswrapper from those wacky guys at sourceforge.net. After that I installed the ndis files off my Windows driver CD (came with my card).

Next I edited my /etc/init.d/network script to include:

# load ndiswrapper on boot. Then bring up the wireless interface
modprobe ndiswrapper
ifconfig wlan0 up

(This was easier than inserting the ndiswrapper into the kernel)

Ok, as you all know this still won't make the interface work so here are some more details. I have turned off WPA encryption. I am broadcasting my ESSID. I installed kwifimanager and it shows a 92% signal strength. My WindowsXP environment works flawlessly.

Here are what my commands give me:

jv-john:/home/john # ndiswrapper -m
modprobe config already contains alias directive
modprobe config already contains alias directive

jv-john:/home/john # ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
lsbcmnds hardware present

jv-john:/home/john # dmesg | grep wlan0
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0f:66:97:59:3d using driver bcmwl5.sys
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present

jv-john:/home/john # ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:66:97:59:3D
inet6 addr: fe80::20f:66ff:fe97:593d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1329 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:35 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:82060 (80.1 Kb) TX bytes:5784 (5.6 Kb)
Interrupt:22 Memory:40800000-40801fff

jv-john:/home/john # iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"valentine"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.452GHz Access Point: 00:0F:66:4B:F5:19
Bit Rate:125Mb/s Tx-Power:25 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-52 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:8241 Missed beacon:0

It looks like my Suse can't see my Linksys access point (WRT54GS). Does anyone have a clue?

I got it... I gave up too soon... LOL

I just forgot to run the ndiswrapper -m then reboot. Ok, now to enable WPA.