Ndiswrapper, modprobe, not mixing in fedora 8

[randorfer]

Hey everyone,

I am not quite sure what is going on. I have a atheros 5007eg wireless card (not supported by madwifi) so I have been forced -- I believe -- to use ndiswrapper. Here are the steps I have taken thus far.

sudo yum install kmod-ndiswrapper

sudo /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf
*I believe this is the correct windows driver for my wireless card*
*load up with out any problems*

sudo modprobe -nv ndiswrapper
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.23.1-42.fc8/extra/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko

Which I believe tells me that everything should go ok with the mod insert but, when I do

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

the system hangs (no mouse, no ctrl + alt + backspace or ctrl + alt + delete etc) and I have to power cycle. I know that there is a log somewhere which could tell me what is happening (I assume a segfault somewhere, right?). Anyone have some ideas on what I should do next? Also, as an aside, when I do

sudo /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l
the output is
net5211 : driver installed
device (168C:001C) present (alternate driver: ath5k)

But when I try to remove the alternate driver (maybe that is causing some errors?) with a simple
sudo rmmod ath5k
I get
ERROR: Module ath5k does not exist in /proc/modules

As I was writing this I realized I should just look inside /proc/modules to see what the module is called. For those interested it is ath_hal (atheros hardware abstraction layer).

So I just did
sudo rmmod ath_hal

which was sucessful and now I will try the infamous
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

which is what usually causes the system to hang. I am posting this before I try it!

[randorfer]

Alright, well that went better than expected! The command did not cause it to freeze up, so I guess my gut instinct that it had something to do with the two drivers fighting was true. On to bigger and better problems,

Now that ndiswrapper is loaded when I look at the dmesg it isn't working correctly!

a quick
sudo dmesg | grep ndiswrapper

results in

ndiswrapper version 1.48 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no)
ndiswrapper: driver net5211 (,11/15/2006,5.1.1.9) loaded
ndiswrapper (ZwClose:2244): closing handle 0xf0077e28 not implemented
ndiswrapper (NdisWriteErrorLogEntry:191): log: C0001389, count: 4, return_address: f8fc76d4
ndiswrapper (NdisWriteErrorLogEntry:194): code: 0xf0d9aa00
ndiswrapper (NdisWriteErrorLogEntry:194): code: 0x28
ndiswrapper (NdisWriteErrorLogEntry:194): code: 0xf8dc0000
ndiswrapper (NdisWriteErrorLogEntry:194): code: 0xf8dc0000
ndiswrapper (mp_init:216): couldn't initialize device: C000009A
ndiswrapper (pnp_start_device:439): Windows driver couldn't initialize the device (C0000001)
ndiswrapper (mp_halt:259): device f06be500 is not initialized - not halting
ndiswrapper: device eth%d removed
ndiswrapper: probe of 0000:04:00.0 failed with error -22
usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

Which to me sounds like it just could not turn my wireless driver on. I seem to remember reading somewhere that to turn the atheros 5007eg on under linux you needed some sort of acer-pci program. I am rather fuzzy here though and if anyone has some insight it would be much appreciated, I would really love to be able to nuke vista off this computer and never look back (looking forward to my card eventually being supported by madwifi...damn hal).

Thanks,
Ryan