Linksys WPC54G v2 not workig on FC6 with ndiswrapper

idelatorre · #1 1st November 2006, 03:39 AM

Hardware:
Toshiba Satellite A15-S127
Celeron Processor / 768 MB RAM / 30 GB HDD

Fedora Core 6 Kernel 2.6 i686

So Far:
Installed ndiswrapper
Registered card with the correct .INF driver for the acx 111 chipset (v2.0)
echo alias wlan0 ndiswrapper >> /etc/modprobe.conf
ndiswrapper -l lists the driver as installed and the hardware as present
verified I have a yenta socket and lspci -v will identify my device as present

Issues:
/etc/init.d/pcmcia file does not exist
/etc/rc.5/ does not contain any pcmcia stuff
iwconfig won't list my device
rmmod ndiswrapper; modprobe ndiswrapper won't bring my device up

please advise on whether I'm missing pcmcia_core?? or any good direction to follow. the card works under windows xp and won't be listed as present if I used the broadcom chipset .inf file with ndiswrapper -i

Thanks!
Ignacio

Crazy4Fedora · #2 13th November 2006, 01:32 AM

How to get WPC54G v2 working on FC6 (and probably other ACX100-111 cards):
(Note that other versions of WPC54G use different chipsets. For example, versions 5 and 7 use atheros, I believe. Version 2 use acx111. Furthermore, other network cards use ACX111. I bet that most people could get their ACX cards up on FC6 with these directions. Note that there are many cards with ACX100 or ACX111 chipsets. Visit the url at the bottom of this page to see if your card works. Though this response is geared explicitly toward the ACX111, I'm sure that if you just changed the firmare--do a google on acx100 rpm--you can use the same instructions. I have used this procedure with both kernels released for FC6 and I'm wireless as I right this on my WPC54G. If you get stuck along the way, cross-reference the directions on the ACX page (url at the bottom) and the readme when you download the source.)

Disclaimer: The following worked for me. I doubt that anything done here will affect your computer adversly, but if so, it's your responsibility and problem.

WPC54G v2 is not a broadcom chipset. I thought it was for the longest time too and did use ndiswrapper with FC3-FC5. Of course, it'll work if you can get it to run, but I had trouble trying to get the 16 stack size working on my laptop because I couldn't create the header files using 'make headers_install'. If someone knows how to do create the header files, please enlighten me.

STEPS for setting up WPC54G (Version 2!!) on FC6:

STEP 0:

You'll need firmware. You can find an rpm on-line for acx111 firmware. I downloaded from:
http://dries.ulyssis.org/rpm/package...ware/info.html
Install using: rpm -ivh acx111-firmware-1.2.1.34-1.fc6.rf.noarch.rpm

STEP 1:

Build the kernel tree as specified in the release notes. Note that I created the symbolic link as mentioned in the release notes. I'm not 100% sure if this is necessary, but I believe it is.

STEP 2:

To get the WPC54G working properly, you need to install acx111. Download from the following site:
http://acx100.erley.org/
I used: acx-20060521.tar.bz2

Unpack it and put it in a directory. Note that there is no containing folder, so unpack it in a folder of its own--something like acx-20060521 would be logical. cd into that directory.

STEP 3:

With FC6, they got rid of the linux/config.h file. Now, I will tell you what I did, but you may want try something else described later. When you unpack acx, there are 7 C source files. With all of these, I backed them up (just to be safe) and then deleted the [#include <linux/config.h>] line from each source file it resided in. Then, it is important to note that I added the line [#include <linux/utsrelease.h>] in the pci.c . This was necessary because one of the functions was failing.
(Side-note: I'm using [ and ] as delimiters in the explination above. Do not include the literal characters.)

Here's what I think would have worked better, but being that my card is working pretty well and I'm tired of tinkering with it, I haven't actually tried it. I believe you can take a linux/config.h from an FC5 version, or look for one on line, and put it in /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686/include/linux and then compile acx. I think this is cleaner and would resolve other problems as well. But again, as previously stated, I haven't actually tried it.

STEP 4:

Compile acx. Note that from this point forward, you can use the directions by Per Bjornsson that begin midway through the README, and are excellent instructions (thanks Per!). I used:

make -C /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build M=$(pwd)
and
make -C /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build M=$(pwd) modules_install

STEP 5:
depmod -ae

STEP 6:

I ran [modprobe acx], and added [alias wlan acx] in /etc/modprobe.conf as the top line. (Note that the same notation with the square brackets is used as above.)

STEP 7:

Restart your network or reboot. I just rebooted.

STEP 8:

System-->Administration-->Network
and your device should show up as a Texas Instruments ACX 111 ...

Configure as desired and enjoy. You do not need ndiswrapper.

Note that occassionally my Access Point drops, but it is so infrequent that I'm not going to bother doing anything about. Especially considering how much time I've spent on this already. However, hopefully with these directions, most may be able to get their ACX111 wireless cards up within an hour

Check out: http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/ACX for ACX instructions, etc.

If you are able to get your ACX100 or ACX111 card working with this procedure, please note in a reply so other people can see.

Simmiyy^ · #3 4th December 2006, 04:40 PM

Hi all, I've got an ASUS Laptop with Fedora core 6 and a WPC54G ver. 2.
To get the wireless card works I try to install ndiswrapper (by YUM v. 1.25 and by Source v. 1.28) but it freez my pc when I plug the card in. I found this topic and I followed all the 9 steps to install the acx module on my machine, now when I plug the card in the system found it and I can configure it but I'm unable to connect to the AP (WRT54GS) I tried to use iwconfig and other grafic utility with no luck

(I also try to change the AP configuration but nothing changed). The only way to get my wireless card to work is use windows.

I noticed also that when I plug in the wireless card with more than one active AP at the same time the acx module, i think, freez my pc.

Any idea ?

Thank you in advantage

Crazy4Fedora · #4 10th December 2006, 03:52 PM

Sorry for the late response. I don't really know how to help though... Can you do a scan? "iwlist scan" By doing so, you should be able to see various access points on your wireless router, and others if they exist in your general area. On my router I have MAC address filtering enabled for my wireless connections. If this is the case and you do not have the MAC address of your wireless card on the list, you will not be able to connect. Also, do you have encryption enabled. If so, you need to configure your card for encryption.

The first test though, should be the scan. If you can perform the scan, then it's a setup problem, and some amount of tinkering with the wireless router settings and your wireless card will do the trick.

Also, I would get rid of ndiswrapper, or at least do an lsmod and see if it is there. I doubt it's a great idea to have two modules installed that work against the same piece of hardware. There may be some competion for the resources and maybe a race condition is hosing acx... I can't confirm this, but it's a thought.

Do the scan and let me know. I'll check this thread occasionally today.

Again, sorry for the late response, and I hope we can get your card up. I hate to see anyone go back to Windows... It's so depressing

Simmiyy^ · #5 11th December 2006, 03:35 PM

Hi thank you for help me!
ok..i did the iwlist scan and this is the output:

Code:

[root@gimli ~]# iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:0F:66:C7:71:E0
                    ESSID:"Simmiyy^"
                    Mode:Master
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality=56/100  Signal level=39/100  Noise level=0/100
                    Encryption key:off
                    Bit Rates:54 Mb/s

that AP is the one to witch i'm trying to connect! as you can see the Encryption is disabled so no WEP kay needed, I use a Mac Filter but the wireless card MAC is in the AP table and Mac Filter is set to: "Permit only PCs listed to access the wireless network"

Code:

[root@gimli ~]# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11b+/g+  ESSID:""  Nickname:"gimli.dotnetlan.org"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:59/100  Signal level:43/100  Noise level:0/100
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

[root@gimli ~]# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:10:XX:XX:XX
          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:5

The mac address is crypted because is not necessary, the next one is the ifcfg-wlan0 script in /etc/sysconfig/network-script/ directory

Code:

TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=00:13:10:XX:XX:XX
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
ONBOOT=no
USERCTL=no
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes
ESSID=
CHANNEL=6
MODE=Managed
RATE='54 Mb/s'

So by my wifi card I'm able to scan (and find) Wireless networks but I'm not able to connect to them

I also tryed to use KnetworkManager and KWiFiManager (from KDE) but with no luck. In the next days I wanna try to use another AP to see if the problem is there.
About ndiswrapper, I remove it befor acx istallation...

Code:

[root@gimli ~]# lsmod | grep ndis
[root@gimli ~]# lsmod | grep acx
acx                   128648  0

Thaks again
Simmiyy^

PS Don't worry for the late response