I've been looking at various live cd threads for an answer to this prob to little avail. I have a thinkpad t21 running a dlink dwl-g630 card. wlan0 is not detected upon boot and any attempt to 'ndiswrapper -i xxxx.inf' is met with something along the lines of 'cannot write to disk disk may be full.'

addistionally, i know it will become an issue but since it is a live cd there is no kernel src installed. is there anyone who is using mepis live cd and in fact has a network connection? if so, please for the love enlighten me.

As always, thanx in advance to an awesome community.

Ignore that error you get. For the most part you should be able to get it to work with NDISWrapper despite that error. If not, then its because its a LiveCD and you might not be able to use it because of that. As for your kernel source, it will appear upon installation.

All I can say is ignore that message NDISWrapper does and continue as normal and see if you can get it to work. On my system I was able to install the driver despite that message.

edit: Sorry. The kernel source is NOT installed when you do an hd install of Mepis. You see, I am sort of new to Linux myself and I haven't done a whole lot of kernel stuff and I assumed that Mepis came with the kernel source. My apologizes, I wasn't intentually trying to give false info.

Once you try to install the driver and get that error, do... and see if it's installed.

The kernel source _does_not_ appear upon installation. It must be downloaded.

I have been able to run ndiswrapper from the live CD several times. The only time I get any form of error is if i try to do ndiswrapper -m.

After installing do, ndiswrapper -l to see if its installed. If it is, then do modprobe ndiswrapper to load it and you're good to go.

will the fact that there is no kernel source be an issue? what i mean is that i will not have a connection at all when running the live cd if i cant get the wireless to work. i suppose i could u name and then boot windows to use the wireless to grad the kernel src. but if i cant install on a live cd then there will be trouble. qtparted is new to me and the last time i tried it i wiped my hd.

advice?

You don't have to have kernel sources or anything if the LiveCD comes with ndiswrapper installed already. Just load your drivers, modprobe it, and setup your card using iwconfig.

The kernel source would only be an issue if you wanted to install the native linux drivers (assuming that there are some for the dwl-g630). Either way, kernel source is useless without an hd install.

ok. i tried once again to no avail. here is the result:

root@1[root]# cd /mnt/hda5/
root@1[hda5]# ls
Adobe msdownld.tmp Program Files unzipped
Documents and Settings network utils Recycled WUTemp
Holding Tank pagefile.sys snort
root@1[hda5]# cd network\ utils/
root@1[network utils]# ls
absetup.exe asus-g630 avast.exe BW1301Setup.exe dwl-g630 ndiswrapper
root@1[network utils]# cd dwl-g630/
root@1[dwl-g630]# ls
data1.cab data2.cab engine32.cab setup.boot setup.ini
data1.hdr Drivers layout.bin Setup.exe setup.inx
root@1[dwl-g630]# cd Drivers/
root@1[Drivers]# ls
ar52119x.sys ar5211.sys net5211.cat net5211.inf
root@1[Drivers]# ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf
Installing net5211
cp: writing `/etc/ndiswrapper/net5211/ar5211.sys': No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
uniq: write error: No space left on device
cp: writing `/etc/ndiswrapper/net5211/net5211.inf': No space left on device
root@1[Drivers]# modprobe ndiswrapper
root@1[Drivers]# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
airplus driver present
bcmwl5 driver present
lsbcmnds driver present
lstinds driver present
mrv8k51 driver present
net5211 driver present, hardware present
netr33x driver present
prismnic driver present
wlanuig driver present
wlipnds driver present
root@1[Drivers]# ndiswrapper -m
Adding "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper
cp: writing `/etc/modules.conf.old': No space left on device
root@1[Drivers]# dhcpcd wlan0
bash: dhcpcd: command not found
root@1[Drivers]# dhcpcd wlan0
bash: dhcpcd: command not found
root@1[Drivers]# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 No such device

root@1[Drivers]#

I've never had that problem before, but is it possible that you are running out of ramdisk?? I'm guessing that you don't have any kind of swap file or swap partition that Mepis can use?

unfortunately, no. i only have a small 11gig available hd that is setup with two partitions in an effort to minimize loss if windows goes down. i wasn't sure how to setup a swap partition for linux when i was installing windows. is there something recursive that i can do?

i have no apprehensions to installing linux onto the hd and firing windows. in fact, that is the ultimate goal here. however, so far, i do not feel confident that i can get the wireless conn up and running in linux....just yet.

thanx for the personal help, dping. i appreciate it greatly.

How much ram do you have?
What filesystems are the two partitions?

392,688kb total physical mem

the file systems are fat32. and yes, i can write to each partition provided that i open the hda via konquerer. i guess that is necessary in order to mount (similar to knoppix). just for the record, i did in fact open / mount the proper partitions before attempting to install.

That should be enough memory, and I have heard that mepis will automatically create swap files on fat partitions, so that shouldn't be the problem.

hmmm...

fyi: I am leaving, will be back tomorrow / later tonight.