Newbie needs help with wi-fi PCMCIA card

[topper]

Hi,

I'm new to Linux (and Fedora). I started out a few weeks ago with PCLinuxOS on an old IBM laptop. Everything was working fine, but I wanted to give Fedora a spin. I installed Fedora today and now my wireless network card doesn't seem to work. It worked fine on PCLinuxOS, so I assume it is supported by Linux. I just need help getting it set up in Fedora.

The card is a Belkin F5D7010 PCMCIA card. I gather from what I've read on other sites that I need to use the NdisWrapper.

I attempted to follow the instructions on this page: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Installation but being new to Linux, there's a lot there I don't understand yet and the installation was not succesful.

Would any more experienced Linux users be willing to walk me through this?

I need to start with some basics, like what directory should I put the ndiswrapper tar in? How do I know if I have a version of Fedora "with source" and what do they mean by "Go to the source directory" and "go to main directory"?

Thanks!

-Topper

PS - I should mention that I can get this laptop online via cabled network if I need to download anything.

[topper]

Bump

Anyone?

[Redbear]

topper,
Having just done this I feel qualified.
It doesn't matter where you put the tar file - just remember where. The biggest issue I had was getting the original windows source drivers for the network card. You must get the .sys and .inf files that go with your card - and again it doesn't matter where you put them - just remember where.

I found some very detailed instructions, but I do not remember the link - fortunately I copied them out. I'll repost them here with credits.

Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/ and download ndiswrapper-1.16.tar.gz. This should save the file to your home folder. If it saves the file to your desktop instead go to your desktop and drag the file into your "Home" folder. (Left mouse click on the file and drag it on top of your "Home" folder while holding the left mouse button down. Then release the mouse button.)

Do a "tar xzvf ndiswrapper-1.16.tar.gz" in your home directory.

Type "su -". Hit enter. Type your root password. Hit enter. Type "cd /home/your_user_name/ndiswrapper-1.16". Hit enter. Type "make". Hit enter. Wait for the build process to complete. Type "make install". Hit enter. Wait for the install to complete.

As root do a "/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -i /home/your_user_name/bcmwl/bcmwl5.inf". This creates /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/bcmwl5.inf.

As root do a "/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l" You should see:
Quote:
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present
As root do "gedit /etc/modprobe.conf" (or use you favorite text editor). In gedit add the line "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.conf. (Be sure there is a blank line at the end of the file.) Click the "save" button in gedit and close it.

Go to "System" > "Administration" > "Network", type your root password, click on "New" and in the "Select Device Type" dialog select "Wireless connection". Click "Forward". In the "Select Wireless Device" dialog select "ndiswrapper (wlan0)". Click "Forward". In the "Configure Wireless Connection" dialog fill in your wireless LAN information. Put a "0x" before the hex key for your WEP encryption. Click "Forward". In the "Configure Network Settings" dialog select "Automatically obtain IP address settings with DHCP or put your info in the appropriate boxes if you have a fixed IP address. Click "Forward". Click "Apply". In the "Network Configuration" dialog double click on "wlan0" and fine tune the settings. Be sure to tick the checkbox for "Activate device when computer starts", then click the "Wireless Settings" tab, select "Auto" in the "Mode" box, select "Specified" under "Network name (SSID)" and type in your SSID, channel and encryption hex key (if you have not already done so) and be sure to preface the hex key with "0x", select "Auto" in the "Transmit rate:" box. Finally click "ok". Then in the "Network Configuration" dialog click on the "Activate" button while "wlan0" is selected to activate it. You may want to de-activate your normal Ethernet connection (eth0) at this point by highlighting it, selecting "edit", unticking the "Activate device when computer starts" checkbox, clicking "ok", and then disabling it by clicking on the "Deactivate" button while it is still highlighted. Reboot your machine. (Note that you will have to re-build the driver each time you install a new kernel.)

Note: For more recent kernels add the line "blacklist bcm43xx" in in "/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist" to disable the native bcm43xx driver (that interferes with ndiswrapper when you have a Broadcom card) or use these alternate instructions.
___________________________
Stanton Finley
stanton-finley.net

[topper]

Redbear,

Thanks for the directions. I'll give this a shot. Do your directions assume I already have Fedora installed with the kernel source or is that not really necessary?

Thanks!

-Topper

[Figment]

I'm no expert, but I don't think the kernel source would be necessary. If anything, you might need to install the kernel header packages:

yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers

[topper]

I tried the above. Kernel sources seemed to have installed successfully. At least I didn't see any errors. When I tried to run make install in the ndiswrapper directory I got a couple of errors.

See attached screenshot.

[Figment]

gcc: command not found
ar: command not found

It looks as though you're missing some programs needed for compiling. Try this:

yum install gcc binutils

(the binutils package contains the ar program)

[topper]

Ok, I made it through the installation process, but things aren't working yet. When I try to activate the wireless card in Network Config, I get the error: cannot activate network device wlan0! ndiswrapper device wlan0 does not seem to be present delaying initialization.

During the install I did not get any errors, but I did get a warning about something called a 4k stack size option. See attached.

Any Ideas?

[Redbear]

topper,
I was unable to get ndiswrapper to work with the kernel.i686 that you are using. I don't think the ndiswrapper software has caught up with the new kernel yet. I am now working using kernel.i586 - however it is a daunting task to switch kernels (at least for me it was). I ended up reloading fc6 from scratch to get kernel.i586 which is an older version. But everything is working for now.

If you want to try something I recommend this: from http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html

Fedora Core 6 ships and uses GCC 4.1. Some applications that were compiled with an older GCC (ex: 3.2) will require compatibility libraries. Make sure to have the following RPM's installed. These are included with the FC6 CD-disk3 or DVD or online (ftp, yum, etc).

compat-libstdc++-33
compat-libstdc++-296

With 'yum', run:

[mirandam@charon ~]$ sudo yum -y install compat-libstdc++-33 compat-libstdc++-296

The compat-libstdc++-33 is required for Realplayer.

This gives some backward compatability for some programs. If you try it I would unload ndiswrapper using the -r option (just type /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper) and you will get all of the available options. then redo the make and make install portion then ndiswrapper with the -i option again. It could just be a compatilbility issue.

Redbear