[SkippyTheNurse]

hello y'all. Of course, as with any person migrating from Widows, I am a noob. I tell you one thing, it was much much easier setting up my system with linux than it was with windows and I like all the options that it has that would usually require third-party applications with windows.

But let me get straight to the point. I have a Toshiba Satellite A15-S157 running around with 512MB ram, Celeron M 2.2G processor, and a "stunning" 40GB HDD. All this maintained with SUSE Linux 10.0. I have two net cards, an old school Orinoco/Lucent Technologies "b" class, and a newer Belkin "g" class. I replaced the Orinoco with the Belkin as an upgrade when I had the Windows XP, but now my linux does even acknowledge it when i plug it nor when i manually set up with YaST. I even had it connected in the CardBus when i was installing the OS. It picked up my Orinoco with no problem, but I really want my "g" class network without having to buy another card that will work with my linux. Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Model: Belkin Wireless G NB Card M#FSD7010 V.4

[SkippyTheNurse]

Just an update. I kept reading around and found out what all this mdiswrapper was about. I tried it. The drivers installed perfectly, but I set up my card about three or four different ways and restarted countless times and still no avail. Not even the power light on the card comes on.

Again, any help is greatly appreciated.

[danleff]

First, have you been able to determine the chipset used on this card? This would be critical to determine what the isue might be.

Take a look at this Puppy Linux thread, see the second post on the thread. Use this to determine the chipset information for your card, if you don't know it. If you do know the chipset, let's move on. Let us know what the chipset is on your specific card. These are not well documented.

Quote:

The drivers installed perfectly, but I set up my card about three or four different ways and restarted countless times and still no avail. Not even the power light on the card comes on.

Great, the drivers installed. What did you do from this point to try and get the card to light up? Did you follow the instructions on the ndiswrapper wiki?

Often the drivers that come on the driver CD disk do not work. What specific Windows drivers did you use? The Windows XP drivers?

When you stated that you tried to set it up four different ways, what do you mean? Can you be more specific?

[SkippyTheNurse]

"When you stated that you tried to set it up four different ways, what do you mean? Can you be more specific?"
-Danleff

Well, first after I did that ndiswrapper, I went to the YaST to set up exactly the way it told me to do it. That didn't work. Then I tried to configure the network settings to neutral, thinking it was my network, and that didn't work. I proceded to change the card settings from wireless to ethernet, PCMCIA box checked and not checked, that also didn't work. All settings were followed by a reboot with the card attatched.

"Often the drivers that come on the driver CD disk do not work. What specific Windows drivers did you use? The Windows XP drivers? "

The Drivers were taken from the original CD, I initially used the drivers I had on my USB flash drive since every now and then I use my network card on other systems, but the drivers on my flash drive didn't work, so I went ahead and used the ones from the CD. There were from the WINXP2K folder, this is the name of the driver "BCMWL5.INF".

As far as the chipset, I will not be able to determine that since I am at work. I will post my findings about that in the morning when I get home. Which is kinda funny, because I was debating with myself on whether or not I should bring my laptop to work should in case a light bulb turned as to how to fix the problem, darn!

Thanks for the help, i know y'all have more important things to do than to bother about a network card.

[SkippyTheNurse]

Well, I tried to foundout the chipset of my Belkin network card. I the xTerminal command, went down the whole list and didn't find the network card. I shows information about my Orinoco card, heck, it even displays information about my USB mouse, but no Belkin. I guess I will have to buy another one.

[SkippyTheNurse]

Wait! I found it, I just overlooked it, it was at the bottom. Anyways, it is Broadcom based.

[danleff]

Your description of the driver file answered the question abour your chipset, Broadcom.

Did you place both the bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys files in the same directory and then try to install them with the ndiswrapper -i command;

ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

The name is case sensitive, so if there are any caps in the inf file name, then you need to be case sensitive with the file name. Both the files need to be there.

Then if you did the ndiswrapper -l command, you should have seen somethng like;

Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present

Both the driver present and hardware present message should be there. If not, they are not installed properly. If the message is there correctly, then;

modprobe ndiswrapper

If the command line returns with no errors, then the module loaded.

Then, to check and see if the card driver is really working;

iwconfig

Which should show a wlan0 entry with a few lines of code.

Do you get this?

[SkippyTheNurse]

I did the modprobe command, and yes, I did get an error message.
This is the Message:
"FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.13-15.11-default/extra/ndiswrapper.ko): Operation not permitted

what exactly does this mean? That my card isn't going to to work or that the ndiswrapper is working?

And in answer about the placement of the drivers before installation, yes, they were both in the same directory. Should I download the drivers off the internet and try those?

[SkippyTheNurse]

Never mind about retrying the downloaded drivers. I went and did, the terminal said this...

linux:~ # ndiswrapper -i home/skippythenurse/download/update/new_driver/80211g/bcmwl5.inf
Installing bcmwl5
couldn't copy home/skippythenurse/download/update/new_driver/80211g/bcmwl5.inf
at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 144.

END...

The driver will still be installed, its just that it will be invalid. So I reverted back to the CD driver, I still get that modprobe message. Eh...Looks gloomy for my network card.

[danleff]

You need to do all the commands, as root user. Once at a terminal windows, type;

su (hit the enter key)

When prompted, input the roor user password that you configured when you installed SuSE, enter key.

Then try the commands.

[SkippyTheNurse]

Well, it did install. However, I still get the modprobe error message.

[danleff]

It just occured to me, are you using the version of ndiswrapper that came with SuSE, or did you install from a newer package that you downloaded?

[SkippyTheNurse]

I am using a new version that the directions told me to download. It was from the ndiswrapper wiki page that linked to that sourceforge.net do-hicki.

[danleff]

Did you try the modprobe command as root user? If so and you still get the modprobe error, you have extra ndiswrapper modules on your system.

Take a look at this fine article.

Follow those directions and see what happens.

The important thing is to get rid of any extra modules that may be resident in the kernel source package, using the ones installed by the ndiswrapper package installed.

Pay special attention to the directions about removing the old modules first. Item #8 under "Preparing for Installation."

Then follow the directions for installing ndiswrapper fresh.

Get to the ndiswrapper directory with the unzipped files.

Do;

make clean
make
make install

Then to the ndiswrapper -i command on your drivers. Check that the drivers are detected correctly with the ndiswrapper -l command.

Then I would do the following (still as root user)

depmod -a
modprobe ndiswrapper

See if that works. Then follow the rest of the directions in the article for "Yast Configuration".

[SkippyTheNurse]

hate to say this, but that didn't work either. I did the modprobe thing, and this time I didn't the error message. However, I did notice something else too, when I am in Yast setting up the card, I tried it twice, and in both times, after I am done setting up, YaST labels my card as "Ethernet Network Card" instead of Wireless Network Card. I tried it two different ways, as PCMCIA checked off and with the box checked, both times I get the same thing. And then, when i am finished and try to connect, I do that ifstatus wlan0 command, and I get this:
ERROR: Interface wlan0 in not available

Well, at least we got the right ndiswrapper installed. We're getting there, one step at a time.