wireless drive installed but hardware is never seen?

[Patriot85]

Okay I need a little help. A couple of weeks ago I got some help from someone here and got my Belking wireless card going but I blew up the installation (twice) and now I'm having trouble getting the wireless going again.

I've got ndiswrapper installed with no problem and I got the driver installed. I also created the ifcfg-wlan0 file. Now when I do the "iwconfig" command it doesn't show the wlan0.

If I go into the GUI network utility the card shows up but you can't associate a MAC address with it. I did the "ndiswrapper -m" as well as the "modprobe ndiswrapper" commands too.

The LED on the card never comes on and if I hadn't just had it working two weeks ago I would think it was a hardware issue


Any help would be much appreciated.

[stoat]

Patriot85,

In your previous thread (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=110743) last month, your main problem after getting the packages installed was not seeing the hardware in the GUI Network Configuration utility. You ended up manually configuring it, but it worked for a while.

I noticed one thing in that thread that may not have been done. Several people writing in another thread (http://forum.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=29659) (and me) found that in addition to creating the wlan0 alias with ndiswrapper -m, we also had to manually add this line to /etc/modprobe.conf for the GUI to work as expected:
alias wlan0 ndiswrapperAfter that, everything went fine like Darkmage's tutorial on the first page of that thread.

So, just to review what seem to be the important steps for you to double-check:

1) Driver confirmed with /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l (Driver installed? Appropriate driver? Same one that worked with your hardware before?)
2) Module loads with /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper and can be confirmed with dmesg | grep ndiswrapper (some output about wlan0, MAC address, etc)

Note: If you did not get positive results from these first two steps, then nothing below will help IMO. Something is just not right with ndiswrapper and the driver or the loading of the ndiswrapper module. These must be fixed somehow. Otherwise, continuing...

3) Alias for wlan0 was created with /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -m and can be confirmed with /sbin/modprobe -c | grep ndiswrapper
4) This line appears in /etc/modprobe.conf or else add it: alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
5) GUI should now list ndiswrapper (wlan0) as a device which can be selected for setup in the GUI after clicking New -> Wireless connection -> Forward.

If all is okay to here and the GUI is working as expected, some settings and issues to consider when configuring the connection in the GUI:

1) Check "Activate device when computer starts"
2) Try checking "Automatically obtain IP address settings with dhcp"
3) Try Mode: Auto
4) Double check your router SSID for accuracy (including letter case)
5) Confirm the channel matches the channel your router is broadcasting on
6) If using a hex encryption key, you must add 0x (zero x) at the beginning of the key
7) Your device MAC address should have been auto detected
8) Remember to activate the device and save the configuration
9) May need to reboot.

If not, this was my shotgun blast at this problem. I'm out of ideas. I thought I would try since this thread was about to drift into page 2 oblivion. :)

[Patriot85]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes I have the correct driver loaded, the same one I uses before. When I do the command "dmseg it doesn't show the hardware at all. And it will not pick up the MAC address. If I do the "lspci" it does show the card however.

I ran the "ndiswrapper -m" command the "modprobe ndiswrapper" command. I added the line you suggested tot he modprobe.conf file but it did't seem to make any differenc. It shows up in the GUI Network tool as wlan0 ndiswrapper.

When I run "dmesg" the only thing I find in the entire file that pertains to the network is the last line that says ndiswrapper is installed along with the version.

While I've gotten to this stopping point much faster than I did the first time, I'm stumped.

[Patriot85]

Does Fedora support ANY wireless cards without using NDISWRAPPER? I've had enough hours of grief that I think it would be worth wild for me to order one if such a thing exist. Is there a list of those cards somewhere?

Thanks,

[sentry]

A friend of mine has an Intel 2200b/g on his laptop. you can download the firmware from livna via yum. A nice surprise.

[stoat]

Still trying to help, Patriot85...

Last month in your previous thread (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=110743), you wrote this in post #12:Well there only ini files on the whole CD are the autorun.ini and the setup.ini. So, I guess I'll go to the manufacture's web site to see what I can find....and steve1961 suggested this in post #13:Try this list for your drivers:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/.../index.php/ListIt's not really clear to me what finally happened about obtaining a driver...just that you got one.

Now then, look at post #441 posted today by kglidh in another thread: (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=29659)my particular issue is [SOLVED]
Originally Posted by kglidh
I have an HP Pavilion dv8000. I had FC4 and had gotten the ndiswrapper working (woo-hoo to me). On not so much of a whim, I upgraded my machine to FC5 and have yummed it up to 2.6.16-1.2133_FC5-x86-64. I downloaded and compiled the latest version of ndiswrapper (1.17). When I do a: ndiswrapper -v, I get driver version 1.17 and vermagic 2.6.16-1.2133_FC5 SMP gcc-4.1. I took the Broadcom driver from my earlier install and ndiswrapper -i and it says it's installed and the hardware is present. I do the next steps of: depmod -a and modprobe ndiswrapper but nothing shows up in the dmesg. The light won't come on (so no one's home?) and the Microsoft reboot-and-everything-works method didn't work.

When I do the lspci, I see: Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02). I feel like I'm really close. Did I miss a step? Am I using an incorrect or incompatible version of something?Well, I'm glad you asked, Kevin. The answer is that the latest driver provided by HP for your laptop isn't the right driver. Nor is, apparently, the one you used with FC4. But after going to www.partha.com , I found the correct driver (as he has the exact same computer as me) and it all works again. I just hope he realizes that he's become my new best friend.My conclusion: kglidh seems to have had very similar symptoms to yours. His/her problem turned out to be the driver. Since your earlier posts in the thread last month suggested that you had trouble finding your driver INF and SYS files, I am wondering if you also may have installed the wrong driver (even if you managed to make it work last month). It's worth a little extra checking before you buy something. Besides I see posts here with people struggling with the Intel 2200 BG too.

Finally, (and this is no help but...) regarding ndiswrapper, I have been using ndiswrapper for several years without so much as a hiccup. Ever. Regarding the Network Configuration GUI, I use it now, but I used to manually configure with iwconfig, activate with ifconfig, get IPs with dhcpcd, and automate it all with a Perl script. I never even tried to use the GUI until now with FC5. BTW, I always use the source code version of ndiswrapper and compile it every time I change kernels. Not that this matters but its a fact for me.

I'm sorry that I don't know enough to solve this for you, but I hope that you get it fixed. And if you do, please tell the story here.

[Patriot85]

Well thanks for all your help. I did double check the drivers. There are only two possibilities really and I tried both of them. It is unfortunate but when you attempt to get the drivers off the CD or from the manufacture you get an excutable that I've never figured out how to extract the drivers from. However after searching on line I came across the driver I used to make it work. I kept a copy of that on my other machine and so used it when I had to reload. The driver is just bcmwl5.inf but I also tried the bcmwl5a.inf. I also made sure the .sys file was in the same folder as the driver.

As I say, the driver loads fine and it shows up. But hardware never does. I tried two different cards and tried different slots on the motherboard.

I see there are several Intel cards that you get a Linux driver for but most of them look to be discontinued by Intel.