fedora 9 wireless Belkin F5D7050 USB 8B06 problem

[dcanno]

Hi


I installed Fedora 9 yesterday and it has problems with connecting to the Internet.

Network Configuration/hardware lists my Belkin adaptor as Belkin Components F5D7050 vere 1000 WiFi, type: Wireless

I`ve created new device in Devices tab, including my wireless network settings, like name and password.

The device remains inactive, when I try to make it active, this information comes up to the screen:

Network Configuration:
`Cannnot activate network device wlan0`
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06)
SET failed on device wlan0; invalid argument.

The adaptor seems not to work, normally I can see flashing green light, when it works, it is dead all the time when I try to activate or make a connection.


Has anyone had similar problem and could help me? Thank you for any advice.

[hyperspace]

Is this a USB device? Post the output of iwconfig.

[dcanno]

Yes, this is USB device.

The iwconfig output:

lo no wireless extensions.


eth0 no wireless extensions.


wmaster0 no wireless extensions.




wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.457 GHz Access Point: 00:90:D0:DF:93:5E
Tx-Power=23 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0





pan0 no wireless extensions.

[dcanno]

access point: 00:90: D0: DF:93:5E

[hyperspace]

Sorry, should have asked you to run ifconfig, also.

[dcanno]

This is ifconfig:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:01:29:D1:ED:70
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:23 Base address:0x4000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:2572 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2572 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:128760 (125.7 KiB) TX bytes:128760 (125.7 KiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:50:18:5E:E9
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-11-50-18-5E-E9-C0-B4-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

[bbfuller]

Hello dcanno

Like most suppliers of wireless devices, Belkin are happy to make a card with the designation "F5D7050" that contains several different chipsets.

We need to determine just what is in yours to know the best way to control your card.

If you run the command:

/sbin/lsusb

in a terminal window it will give you some result like this:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0930:653d Toshiba Corp. Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 USB Stick (1GB)
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 08ff:2580 AuthenTec, Inc. AES2501 Fingerprint Sensor
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 03f0:171d Hewlett-Packard Wireless (Bluetooth + WLAN) Interface [Integrated Module]
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

What we are interested in are the equivalent numbers for your wireless card of those I've indicated in red.

Using those as the basis of an internet search will usually reveal the chipset in your card. Then we'll be in a position to advise on how best to control it.

[dcanno]

Hi

This is the result:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 050d:7050 Belkin Components F5D7050 ver 1000 WiFi
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:c50e Logitech, Inc. MX-1000 Cordless Mouse Receiver
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub


thank you for helping me

[bbfuller]

Hello dcanno

Searching the internet on those numbers tells me that the chipset in your card is a 'Prism'.

I'm certainly not having much luck finding people who have had success using it with anything other than ndiswrapper.

There is in theory a prism54 and/or a p54 driver included in the kernel that will control such cards once the correct firmware is installed. I suspect it is that loading, which is giving you the results you see in Network Configuration. It won't get you anywhere without the firmware. I can't find any reference to that driver being developed later than early last year and can't see anyone reporting success with it. You might like to do a search around yourself.

Incidentally Network Configuration is not the place to control wireless cards in Fedora. Fedora uses NetworkManager which is located on the top Gnome Panel just to the left of the clock. While it is running, Network Configuration will generate the sort of errors you are seeing. The two methods are mutually exclusive when it comes to controlling wireless cards.

I think in any event we need to know if those drivers are loading, because if they are we will probably have to blacklist them before ndiswrapper could get control of the card.

Try running:

/sbin/lsmod | grep p54

and

/sbin/lsmod | grep prism54

in a terminal and copy and paste back any results that you get and we'll think again.

[dcanno]

Hello bbfuller

the results are:

/sbin/lsmod | grep p54
p54usb 21888 0
p54common 19328 1 p54usb
mac80211 228080 4 rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib,p54usb,p54common

I typed the second code with no result.

Cheers

[bbfuller]

Hello dcanno

I'm still unsure as to what to recommend here.

I identified your card on this page:

http://prism54.org/newdrivers.html

You will see it reckons your card has a GW3887 chipset.

Further on in the site on this page:

http://prism54.org/faq.html

it says of that chipset:

Devices with a GW3887 chip are prone to (yet) unexplained random crashes

The home page of that site, presumably the home page for the development of that driver seems to have had no activity since February 2007, an age in Linux terms.

I'll happily give you what pointers I can to ndiswrapper, but you'll have to decide what you want to do.

[dcanno]

Thank you for help.
I have no experience with setting ndiswrapper, but I am happy to give it a try.

[bbfuller]

Hello dcanno

You'll need some extra bits off the internet to do that.

Do you have internet access on the machine you want to install ndiswrapper on or will you have to get the bits on another machine and transfer them.

[dcanno]

Hi

I have my notebook connected to the Internet and can transfer files to Fedora PC. Found the ndiswrapper website and downloaded the ndiswrapper-1.53.tar file.

[bbfuller]

Hello dcanno

It's a good thought but there is a better way to do it for Fedora.

We have a third party repository called Livna where lots of the programs that don't get included in Fedora are made ready inot rpm's that match Feddora.

The beauty of doing it that way is that when the Fedora kernel changes, a not infrequent occurence, new modules are made available in the repository. If you compile ndiswrapper yourselt, you have to do it each time the kernel changes.

Give me 20mins and I'll post the notes to do it that way.

[bbfuller]

Hello dcanno

Here are the general notes for installing and configuring ndiswrapper.

As you have a kernel module loading to the card already I think you will have to do one more step.

When you have done an 'su -' as in the first part of the notes, open a root text editor with the command:

gedit

open the file:

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

There will already be some lines in it, add these two more immediately under those:

blacklist p54usb
blacklist p54common

We'll see if that is enough, we may have to add some more depending on the output of the 'ndiswrapper -l' command.

Reboot the machine.

This is the generic instruction set for installing your windows driver with ndiswrapper:

Ndiswrapper, as it's name implies is a way of wrapping some Linux code around a windows driver to make it work in Linux.

Ndiswrapper will not work with Windows Vista drivers. It is also not happy with every version of a driver for every chipset. If the one that came with your card doesn't work it may be necessary to experiment with other manufacturers drivers that were made for the particular chipset.

The parts of the windows driver file that you are looking for are the .inf file and the matching .sys file.

For instance in my case when I used ndiswrapper for my broadcom card, there was a 'bcmwl5.inf' file in the driver along with a bcmwl5.sys. Other manufacturers will use different file names.

Acquire full root rights with:

su -

That's a space and a minus sign after the su. It gives full root rights over the machine, not just over your own environment which is what you get with plain su.

If you haven't already, install the Livna repository:

rpm -i http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm

Install ndiswrapper:

yum install kmod-ndiswrapper

should bring in the three relevant packages.

Then set up and configure ndiswrapper with:

ndiswrapper -i <path to your windows driver file>.inf

should install the driver,

ndiswrapper -l

if it is going to work should return "driver present" and "hardware present"

modprobe ndiswrapper

should load the driver into the kernel, but probably only until you reboot.

If you are lucky now and NetworkManager is running then after a short while it 'may' begin reporting wireless networks. NetworkManager is the preferred method of connecting to wireless networks with Fedora and should be located on the top Gnome Panel to the right in the notification area.

If it works, or indeed if it doesn't you will also need to run:

ndiswrapper -ma

and then edit the file:

/etc/modprobe.conf

as root and add the line:

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

to it.

{Editing modprobe.conf should only be applicable to Fedora 8. In many instances Fedora 9 doesn't even have the file. If NetworkManager doesn't recognise your card you may need to create the modprobe.conf file in 9}

Reboot and try connecting again.

Post back if you have any questions or encounter problems.

[dcanno]

Could you give me names of the three ndiswrapper packages? I have to download them on my laptop before transfering to Fedora PC and installing.

Cheers

[bbfuller]

Hello dcanno

Sorry for the confusion, I thought when you said your laptop was connected to the internet that it was that machine you were wanting to install wireless on.

Here's the info you need.

If you want to install the ndiswrapper rpm's from Livna without an internet connection then you need to know which kernel you are running.

uname -a

from a terminal will tell you that. My machine reports:

Linux lenovo 2.6.24.4-64.fc8 #1 SMP Sat Mar 29 09:54:46 EDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

The important parts to note for the kernel on your machine are the equivalent to the parts I've marked in red.

Go to this site:

http://livna.cat.pdx.edu/fedora/8/i386/

You will need a file like:

kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.24.4-64.fc8-1.52-6.lvn8.1.i686.rpm

but that matches your kernel number and architecture, and a file like:

kmod-ndiswrapper-1.52-6.lvn8.1.i686.rpm

note how the parts of this file name match the previous file, and finally like:

ndiswrapper-1.52-1.lvn8.i386.rpm

that again matches the other two. Don't worry, the architecture for this one is the basic 386 architecture.

Transfer them all to a folder on your linux machine where there are no other rpm files..

In a terminal, acquire full root rights by issuing the command:

su -

that's a space and a minus sign after the su.

Then use the cd command to change into the folder where you have the three rpm files.

Use the command:

rpm -ivh *.rpm

to install the three files. By using a wild card they should be able to sort out their interrelated dependencies for themselves.

That's written for Fedora 8 but it's easily translated to 9.

[thinglie]

Hello,

I get a failed dependency resolution when installing kmod-ndiswrapper. kernel-uname-r not found.
This is odd, since I have latest kernel and everything should work.

Thanks,

thinglie

[bbfuller]

Hello thinglie

Welcome to the forum.

Can you post back the results of running just:

uname -r

and tell me how you are trying to install ndiswrapper.

Are you doing it directly over the internet or are you downloading ndiswrapper on one machine and then transferring it to another.

[thinglie]

I'm downloading ndiswrapper straight and installing it as above, using "yum install kmod-ndiswrapper"

As for uname:

[root@localhost ~]# uname -r
2.6.25.10-86.fc9.i686

[bbfuller]

Hello thinglie

I have exactly the same kernel as you installed. However, it's not the most recent. There is now a kernel-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686.rpm in the repositories.

When I try to install ndiswrapper using the command I specified and you are trying the process offers to update the kernel at the same time as installing ndiswrapper.

Would you like to compare what you see with the output from my machine which is in the attached file and tell me where they start to differ.

[thinglie]

Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
livna | 2.1 kB 00:00
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-ndiswrapper.i686 0:1.53-2.lvn9 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686 = 1.53-2.lvn9 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686.i686 0:1.53-2.lvn9 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686
--> Processing Dependency: ndiswrapper-kmod-common >= 1.53 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686.i686 0:1.53-2.lvn9 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686
---> Package ndiswrapper.i386 0:1.53-1.lvn9 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686-1.53-2.lvn9.i686 from livna has depsolving problems
--> [B]Missing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686 is needed by package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686-1.53-2.lvn9.i686 (livna)
Error: Missing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686 is needed by package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686-1.53-2.lvn9.i686 (livna)

So, it finishes depsolving, then tells me it's cocked up. Any ideas? You've been most helpful, by the way, thank you!

(could it be i need another repository installed in yum? if so, which one and where can i get it?)

[bbfuller]

Hello thinglie

I would hazard a guess that your yum configuration does not include the Fedora updates repository for some reason.

It's usually installed and activated by default though.

Take a look in the file:

/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo

and see if in the section [updates] 'enabled' is set to '1' - without any quotes of course.

[thinglie]

Updates was on, -debug and -source however were not, so I turned them on...did it work? Did it heck. Still no ndiswrapper....

[bbfuller]

Hello thinglie

Best turn those other two repos back off, they are not usually activated.

Why not take the line of least resistance and do another update to get the kernel in the ordinary way. Then do ndiswrapper.

If it refuses to update the kernel, it's a different problem.

[thinglie]

It's a different problem:


[root@localhost david]# yum update kernel
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Update Process
Could not find update match for kernel
No Packages marked for Update

[bbfuller]

Hello thinglie

Well, let's see just what kernels you have installed then. Try:

rpm -q kernel

and post back the results