Ndiswrapper and drivers installed..where to now?
hello there. I should start off by saying that I am still learning linux so please bare with me.
I finally managed to get ndiswrapper installed on my laptop. I am using Fedora Core 6 distro. I downloaded the drivers for my wireless card: Wireless NIC Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG. I extracted: w29n51.inf and w29n51.sys from the downloaded file I got from intels website. I used the following command to install the .inf file: ndiswrapper -i w29n51.inf The install went fine with no error messages. Now at this point I am kind of stuck as what I am supposed to do now to see if I can actually get the wireless to work. Just to let you know I am currently connected to the internet via utp cable. So I do have access to the internet through linux, but I still want to get the wireless going on this laptop. Thanks in advance!! todd |
Ok well actually I think I have done something wrong. When I typed in ndiswrapper -l the message I get back is: w29n51 driver installed (alternate driver: ipw2200)
I am pretty sure it is supposed to say "hardware present" somewhere in there so I definitely had to of gone wrong somewhere along the line. thanks todd |
The alternate driver: ipw2200 means there already is a native driver loaded for your device and will conflict with ndiswrapper.. Needs firmware to make it work. Either remove that driver and proceed with ndiswrapper or look here http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/fc2-ipw2200.shtml and follow from "Download ipw2200-fw-3.0.tgz from..." part. Normally you would use the native driver but on reading the link above performance seems to be iffy so maybe try both (not at the same time tho ;) ).
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thanks todd |
Hope it works - looks pretty comprehensive guide.
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Even if two potentially competing drivers are installed, you can blacklist the one you don't want to keep things smiling & happy. I agree that the ipw2200 driver would be the better choice. |
Wow thanks for the speedy responses guys I really appreciate it. My plan is to attempt to get the ipw2200-1.2.1 driver working. Performance at this point really isn't that big of an issue, as long as the speed isn't running super slow. So I will attempt to try that tutorial provided. If I decided later that I wanted to attempt to try and us ndiswrapper, would I simply have to blacklist ipw2200-1.2.1 driver and then use ndiswrapper?
thanks again for the help todd |
Ok well I went ahead with the tutorial and everything seemed to go alright. I got to the part where it asks me to restart and them check for errors using this command: dmesg | grep ipw2200, and then issue this command: dmesg | grep ieee80211. Upon issuing both commands the output result is nothing for both of them. According to the tutorial I am supposed to get some output. So I am wonder where I might have gone wrong? Also I noticed that on one of the links provided in the tutorial they have a page for my specific wireless adapter: http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/ . I am wondering if instead of using the 2200 files and drivers if I should instead get all 3945 drivers and files and try the tutorial using them?
there are installation instructions provided here for the 3945 wireless adapter: http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/INSTALL thanks in advance todd |
I went through the entire tutorial twice. And I am still getting nothing. I am not even sure where I am going wrong. If you guys have any ideas based upon my other posting i would greatly appreciate it.
There is one more thing I wanted to ask about. After I installed the ipw2200 drivers there was a message at the end of the install that said. "don't forget to copy your firmware to the hotplugs directory" or something to that effect. I am not 100% sure what the install meant by this. Could this have something to do with why my install didn't go as planed? thanks todd |
After you get the driver issue resolved, use yum to install the network manager and, if you're using KDE, the knetworkmanager, vis:
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yum install NetworkManager knetworkmanager Since I mostly use KDE, what I do is start knetworkmannager which puts an applet in the lool-bar. Right clicking on the applet shows you a list of available access points, and clicking on the one you want to access should prompt you for the pass phrase (if it's protected) and start the network connection for you. Note: If the access point to which you want to connect is WPA protected, you'll need to have installed the wpa_supplicant package to complete the connection. |
I need to learn to read. I replied to your question about using ipw2200 vs. ndiswrapper. You clearly stated in your original post that you have a 3945 adapter. So, why are you messing with the 2200?
Remove the ipw2200 driver. Re-read the 3945 instructions. You need to install four components: ieee80211 subsystem ipw3945 driver firmware regulatory daemon Until all of those things are properly installed, your card will not work. |
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http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/ipw3945 here a tutorial to install drivers for my particular wireless adapter on FC6, however when I attempted the tutorial I was stopped when I tried to 'make' the drivers from the ipw3945-1.2.0.tgz tar ball. ieee80211 was stopping it from making. I received an error message saying that ieee80211 was from a different tree or something like that. I don't have the exact error on hand at the moment, but it wouldn't allow me to actually make the drivers so I couldn't install them so I couldn't finish the tutorial. It gave me an option to over ride the warning but it warned that doing this could cause troubles down the line so I didn't go ahead with it. So thats why i was messing with the ipw2200 drivers. Why would FC6 tell me to use ipw2200 drivers when my wireless adapter is a Wireless NIC Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG thanks for all your help thus far todd |
FC6 didn't tell you anything. That message was from the well-intentioned developers of ndiswrapper. It identified your Intel NIC, but didn't get the model quite right.
In order to help work through installing all of the pieces for ipw3945, we'll need the exact error. My preference is to install from source, but you should consider installing pre-compiled RPMs. One link: http://www.mabula.net/dell_inspiron_6400.html |
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Following the tutorial on this page http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/ipw3945 this is the error I received when I tried to use the 'make' command on the drivers for 3945BG wireless card: Code:
WARNING: Your kernel contains ieee80211 symbol definitions and you |
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There's only one 3945 chipset, and it's B/G. The person in that link abbreviated. I typed ipw3945 Fedora Core 6 in Google and got a bunch of hits, including FreshRPMs where they have the daemon, the driver, the ieee80211 subsytem and the firmware. Put FreshRPMs into your Yum repository list and grab everything you need. The out of tree error seems to indicate that the 80211 stuff was added later or it's unique to FC. Using the freshrpms may resolve that. |
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