hey all:

i'm fed up with windows, and i would like to start my computer life over with linux. i went out today and bought suse 9.1 personal edition (because i found suse to be the most user friendly for people converting from windows). anyway, i've got a dell inspiron 5000, suse 9.1, and the wpc11 v.4 wireless card. that's where my problems begin, the wpc11 vers 4 wireless card. i have been searching for a couple of days now about how to install this card w/ suse 9.1 and i have come up with a few sources of information, but my only problem is that i'm very new to linux. so even when i see instructions about downloading a file and then compiling and running whatever programs i get confused, so much so it almost makes me want to give up. i would like to know if there is anyone out there that can explain to me (a win-dummy) how to get the "kernel" for my wpc11 v.4 card working in like an in-depth step by step process. is there even a kernel that works with this card & suse 9.1?

any help at all would be great, thanks.
keith s.

hay again:

i tried to do the HOW TO by coindood found here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...icle&artid=162

anyway, i get through step 1, where it says to edit wlanup. (i'm pretty sure i've done everything right thus far) so far i've extracted the sip to my desktop, completed step 1, and now here's where trouble begins...

since yes i am using a router i try to goto: "/etc/resolv.conf file" but it's not there. Konqueror comes up with an error message saying that the file or folder does not exist. just trying to see if i could get to the next step i try to look for "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0" and it seems that that isn't there either. once again all help is greatly appreciated, and welcome.


thanks in advance,
keith s.

this drivers for rtl8180 work with kernel 2.4.20 not with 2.6.4

you should install ndiswrapper and use winxp drivers that should work

like i said, i am very new to linux. could you please explain to me how i can go about doing this?

Hi,
I realize that you're new to linux. I am too. I've been doing this thing for about 6 months now and I still feel very new. I'm getting the hang of it though.
I have an HP laptop with WinXP and Suse9.1 Personal which I downloaded free from SuSE's ftp.
For your wireless card problem, what you should do is find out what brand of wireless card you have. You said WPC11 so I'm guessing its a Linksys. Is it built into your comp or is it a separate wireless card?
Basically what you should do is check out www.linuxant.com I use their .rpm for Suse9.1 and I'm using my laptop wirelessly w/ WPA encryption now. I've even got Wine working which lets me run IE6, mIRC, and more.
As far as setting up SuSe and configuring, I bought Partition Magic T(a Symantec product). This lets me partition my harddrive (because I have a laptop). I have an 80g setup as 50g for XP, 50mb for boot, 1000mb for swap, I used 10g for fat32, and the rest is Linux ext2. I used the fat32 to transfer stuff between XP and Suse9.1 and I still do. If you decide to go with Linuxant, you'll need to copy a copy windows files (a .inf and .sys file) for the drivers for your wireless card. Basically Linuxant .rpm is a program to translate windows drivers to linux drivers. It gives you all the linux functions you'll need to do with your wireless card (with the exception of WPA -- which is a completely more detailed subject).
When I installed SuSe, It defaults most things for you in Personal edition, what you should do is change the Software configuration so that you have C/C++ compliers and make commands. This lets you compile programs to run (like the WPA I talked about above).
The reason personal doesnt default it is to keep it simple in the beginning but I find that I needed that stuff in the beginning so I went head first.
The best place to start learning your Suse is the Control Panel. It gives you many options.

In case you're not sure about the whole compile and rpm and .tgz and all that jazz here's the simple story.
RPM's, tqz's, bz2, and all the other extentions are simply .zip files. The RPM is a zip format from Redhat that almost all linux systems use now. I find RPM's are the easiest because most installations consist of going to terminal and type "rpm -i <file .rpm>" Then u're done, its installed. Depending on the program, it may or may not install it to your Suse menu. The .tgz format is like a zip too except you untar it where you want it to reside. The rpm's mostly go default. I would stick w/ RPMs in the beginning and then for tgz's read the installation instructions to see how you should untar it.

Let me know if you need any more help!
Hope this helps!

Sorry for not replying (vacation).

Just as Zoran says, use the ndiswrapper. The howto is shown in my signature. Using Linuxant's DriverLoader is fine, but you can save yourself the money and just go the ndiswrapper way (or go get a prism-based card, which are linux-compatible out of the box).

hey coindood:

i tried following the instructions in your sig, but i ran into a few problems. First I would like to reitterate that I'm using Suse 9.1 Personal. I installed ndiswrapper via. YaST instead of downloading the file you suggest in your sig. (I have that file installed but don't know how to install it.) Anyway, the first problem that I run into is that instead of the ndiswrapper files being in: /home/user_name/ndiswrapper/. Instead my files are found in: /usr/sahre/doc/packages/ndiswrapper , I don't know if this is much of a problem, but I continued anyway and unzipped the Windows drivers into that folder. I try to follow along with your directions but when i type the Konsole tells me "command not found". I figured I'd try to just type install, but it says there are too few arguments.


Could you please help me out and tell me what's going on?


Thanks,
Keith S.

if you installed ndiswrapper via rpm you only need to write at the console

ndiswrapper -i </path>

After installing you can run

ndiswrapper -l

to see the status of your installed drivers. If you have installed the correct
driver you should see something like this:

Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 present

Where "present" means that you have a PCI-device present that can be used with the
driver bcmwl5

To load the module type

modprobe ndiswrapper

If you get no error the driver should now be loaded and active. You can verify
this by checking system log (produced by 'dmesg')

sorry that is

ndiswrapper -i </path/to/inffile.inf>


the path "/usr/share/docs/packages/" is for Documantations (readme, help etc.)

After searching and searching I've found something that was a little more helpful for SuSE 9.1. It was in the SuSE Support Database:

Hope this helps anyone else.

Ok, so according to ndiswrapper I've got the rtl8180 drivers installed correctly. And accoring to YaST, I've got an Linksys Ethernet Controller Configured with DHCP, and a Wireless Network Card Configured with DHCP (I add this one).

Is there anything else I have to setup before being able to connect to my network? The Wireless Network Card is Configured to my ESSID, but I can't find where to do that with the Linksys one, any ideas? Is there a step I'm missing?

You have to write

iwconfig wlan0 essid "your essid here"

iwconfig wlan0 channel your_channel_here


ifconfig wlan0 your_ip netmask your_netmask


than you should be able to connect to your network

so here's where i'm at:

linux:~ # ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
net8180
linux:~ # modprobe ndiswrapper
linux:~ # [it says nothing on this line although i've read it's suppoed to say: ndiswrapper version 0.6+CVS loaded then ndiswrapper adding rtl8180.sys]

linux:~ # iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; No such device.

At the end of this post ( http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...345#post877345 ) coindood states I have these in the rtl8180 driver folder but don't know where to put this...