Wireless assistance for a N00b

[bobbyjones2k5]

I'm a completely new linux user. I'm basically tired of looking at Vista and having to deal with the extremely long boot times. I've installed Fedora 8 and love everything except I can't get wireless configured. I have an Atheros AR5007EG chipset. I've downloaded and installed ndiswrapper. I performed the installation instructions, make;make install, but when I go into the directory where I have the windows driver (.inf file) and I type : ndiswrapper -i ****.inf, I get, ndiswrapper : command not found. I checked for anything during the install of ndiswraper and I did see a warning about 4k stack might not work with windows drivers but I don't know what that means or how to fix it. I'm ready to yank my hair out and I'm already bald. I've been trying this and madwifi for the past few days and I'm ready to give up. I really REALLY don't want to stick with Vista. It's the worst OS ever. Any help would be extremely appreciated. I apologize for my long rant ahead of time.

PS. I'm a windows admin trying to learn something new and linux looks like a cool place to start

[glennzo]

Bobby, I probably can't help you get this card working, but often times when you get a 'command not found' it's a case of not having privileges to run that command or the need to use the complete path. I don't use ndiswrapper so I can't tell you what the path is. If you type in a terminal as root updatedb and then locate ndiswrapper the path will be revealed. Let's say it's in /sbin. Then you may need to type /sbin/ndiswrapper -l ****.inf. Hope this cryptic answer proves to be helpful :rolleyes:

[bobbyjones2k5]

Thanks for your assistance. I will try your suggestion when I get home. I would really like to get this up and working as its the only hurdle thats keeping me from completely jumping ship on Windows Vista/XP. I have to use these for work purposes in being a Windows admin but would like to venture away personally as I can't stand Vista.....its horrible.

[bbfuller]

Hello bobbyjones2k5

I see from your original post that you are seeing messages about a 4k stack size and that usually implies that you are trying to compile ndiswrapper from source.

That way is full of difficulties, not the least of which is that you will have to recompile the ndiswrapper kernel module each time the kernel is changed. That can happen quite frequently in Fedora. It is also prone to the 4k stack message you are seeing.

There are precompiled rpm's of ndiswrapper available for Fedora which get updated fairly soon after the kernel changes.

There is a howto here that may give you some pointers on how to get ndiswarpper as an rpm and how to use it:

http://www.fedoraguide.info/index.php/Fedora8#Ndiswrapper_drivers_howto

That of course refers to someone who was using Broadcom drivers for their card and you will have to change references in the commands to your particular Windows driver. Notice also that the author of the howto is issuing all of the commands as root.

I've never tried this with an Atheros card - don't have one - but I would point out that for other cards it is sometimes necessary to blacklist the built in Linux driver. You "may" find it useful to issue the command:

/sbin/lsmod

and see if there are any modules listed as ath(something) just in case ndiswrapper doesn't work straight off.

Finally, on this page there are acouple of references to people who have got this chipset working with ndiswrapper:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php?/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,33/id,list_a/

one of whom specifies disabling the built in madwifi drivers.

[bobbyjones2k5]

BBFuller,

Thank you very much for the help and information. I'm finding this forum to be quite helpful and a great resource. I should have tried using linux years ago. I will try your suggestions tonight and will update tomorrow morning. Once again, thank you for your help.

[bobbyjones2k5]

bbfuller,

Thank you for your help so far. I tried your first suggestion. I followed the instructions which seemed to have worked properly. Before I started, when I checked my "wlan0" interface, it showed that it was detected as an "Atheros AR5007EG" card. When I would click on the Network Manager icon in the upper right hand corner, Wired would be selected, Wireless greyed out, but it showed Connect to another wireless network. After I rebooted, it only showed Wired. And I checked the "wla0" interface and it did not show up as it did before. Not too sure if what I did was correct but I will have to try disabling madwifi before doing the ndiswrapper isntall. Unfortunately I don't know how, I was thinking it might be "yum remove madwifi kmod-madwifi" but not sure. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks.

[bbfuller]

Hello bobbyjones2k5

Hopefully you shouldn't need to uninstall the madwifi drivers just blacklist them.

The last five lines of my post #4 suggest a way to go about that and the paragraph below the one in the fedora guide that the link points to talks about how to blacklist drivers.

[kizwan]

Hi guys,
Now we can use our card AR5007EG using madwifi driver. Check this URL:-
http://madwifi.org/ticket/1679

I'm using Fedora 8. It should work with Fedora 7 too.

Don't forget to remove any existing ndiswrapper & madwifi driver to make sure it is working properly.

[bobbyjones2k5]

kizwan,

Thanks for the info. I had switched over to Mandriva 2008 as I saw a post somewhere, I think madwifi's site, where someone had a much easier time getting wireless to work with the Atheros chipset. I downloaded the patch, followed the instructions and am running into trouble when trying to "make" the madwifi driver. I keep getting an error, build not found (I can't recall, I'll go on laptop later and post error). I'm going to switch back to Fedora8 and try the instructions there and see where I get. I had to install the "make" package to even get that far. I would like to get this up and working but I understand its an issue with the chipset more than anything. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[FriedChips]

When building kernel modules you need to have certain things installed
yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel
The development tools get you what you need for compiling, and you will need kernel-devel and possibly kernel-headers for kernel module compiling

[kizwan]

kizwan,

Thanks for the info. I had switched over to Mandriva 2008 as I saw a post somewhere, I think madwifi's site, where someone had a much easier time getting wireless to work with the Atheros chipset. I downloaded the patch, followed the instructions and am running into trouble when trying to "make" the madwifi driver. I keep getting an error, build not found (I can't recall, I'll go on laptop later and post error). I'm going to switch back to Fedora8 and try the instructions there and see where I get. I had to install the "make" package to even get that far. I would like to get this up and working but I understand its an issue with the chipset more than anything. Any help is greatly appreciated.

You don't have to change to Fedora 8. Just like FriedChips said, you maybe missing some tools or package. FriedChips has listed the required package. Good luck. :)