ndiswrapper conflicting with restricted video drivers in Ubuntu?!

farge · 07-18-2008, 07:36 AM

Hey all,

I just did a fresh install of Ubuntu Hardy to try to get rid of some problems. I have a Netgear WG311v3 for wireless networking and an ATI HD 2600 XT video card.

My main problem with my previous install was that at almost every boot NetworkManager would ask me for my wireless key (WPA) at least 4 times and never connect.

Everything was hunky dory with this fresh install until I installed Envy NG and got it to install the ATI drivers. From that point, it would do the same old trick with the wireless network - it would ask me for my wireless key multiple times and then fail to connect.

I got Envy to uninstall the ATI drivers and restarted, and could then connect to the wireless network.

I installed the ATI drivers manually from the repository, and then the same old trick - it would ask me for my wireless key multiple times and then fail to connect.

Does anyone have any idea what the heck is going on here?

And if this is worthy of a bug report, where should I aim it?

BTW, running Ubuntu Studio 8.04 x64

farge · 07-20-2008, 01:36 AM

Just to bump this, I've updated ndiswrapper, the ati video drivers and the wireless drivers to the latest versions.

More info: dmesg shows the following error numerous times when trying to connect to the network:

Quote:

[ 214.000074] ndiswrapper (set_essid:59): setting essid failed (C0010015)

Hope someone can help! This totally has me stumped.

XavierP · 07-20-2008, 05:25 AM

http://www.jimbo7.com/wiki/index.php...1v3_LINUX_WIKI - have a look at that link and see if there's anything there. I will say that under *buntus and Debian it usually takes me a few goes to get my wireless up and running. Especially with the network manager.

Hangdog42 · 07-20-2008, 07:09 AM

I just installed Ubuntu Hardy on a laptop for a friend and ran into the same problem. When I did a little digging I found that NetworkManager has a long-standing bug with WPA encryption. To put it bluntly, the current NetworkManager is a pile of garbage. I replaced it with Wicd and that has worked flawlessly.

farge · 07-20-2008, 11:45 PM

Ok... got it working...

I'd been using the latest stable version of ndiswrapper (1.53), compiled from the source. That wasn't working.

I ditched that and installed ndiswrapper-common, ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 and linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-18-generic (had to re-install that one because ndiswrapper 1.53 had deleted the kernel module) from the Ubuntu repositories, which is equivalent to ndiswrapper 1.50, and it worked fine! So very, very odd.

I guess there's a reason the Ubuntu folk haven't upgraded the version in the repository yet, but it just seems strange. It seems like they've worked at getting NetworkManager, wpa_supplicant and ndiswrapper working with particular versions and decided to stick with it... can't really blame them, it's a bitch to get working!

Hangdog42 · 07-21-2008, 07:59 AM

I'm glad you got it working, but I don't think ndiswrapper is the main culprit here. The laptop I installed Hardy on had an Intel 2100 chipset and that was using the ipw2100 driver. From my research, Networkmanager is just simply not up to the task in its current incarnation. I suppose some drivers may be hit harder than others but that doesn't make much sense. The only way your ndiswrapper scenario makes any sense is if Ubuntu is doing some patching behind the scenes to make it work with Networkmanager.

Anyway, if this continues to cause trouble, do switch to Wicd. There hasn't been any trouble on that laptop since I installed it.