Ndiswrapper on Debian Sarge with 2.4 kernel

Hello NG,

as you may have read I just bought a D-Link 520+ wireless NIC. Now I am
trying to get it working, but until now failing.

Due to the nonexistence of any open-source drivers for this chipset I
was recommended to use ndiswrapper. I installed ndiswrapper properly and
the user space utility says "driver present, hardware present". At this
state the LED at the back of the card has never flashed yet. I've been
believing that it would flash since the card is connected to
motherboard? Thia ia just like my wired NIC behaves.

However, I still can't use WLAN because there is no "device" created.
Ifconfig shows only loopback, eth0 (the wired one) and ppp0 (my DSL
connection). I realized that it will rarely work because I installed
ndiswrapper-modules-2.6.8-2-386 and I am using kernel 2.4.

I am used to binary packages and have no clue how to install ndiswrapper
in another way and create kernel modules 2.4! Is this at least possible?


Please explain to me, how to get ndiswrapper working with kernel 2.4. I
think I've done anything else right. Output of user utilities say so.

Daniel Böhmer, Germany

=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Daniel_B=F6hmer?= <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>Hello NG,

>as you may have read I just bought a D-Link 520+ wireless NIC. Now I am
>trying to get it working, but until now failing.

>Due to the nonexistence of any open-source drivers for this chipset I
>was recommended to use ndiswrapper. I installed ndiswrapper properly and
>the user space utility says "driver present, hardware present". At this

OK, now you must load the module
modprobe ndiswrapper

Now when you do
iwlist s
you should get a list of the access points available to you.


>state the LED at the back of the card has never flashed yet. I've been
>believing that it would flash since the card is connected to
>motherboard? Thia ia just like my wired NIC behaves.

>However, I still can't use WLAN because there is no "device" created.
>Ifconfig shows only loopback, eth0 (the wired one) and ppp0 (my DSL
>connection). I realized that it will rarely work because I installed
>ndiswrapper-modules-2.6.8-2-386 and I am using kernel 2.4.

If it is really the wrong module then no it will never work. So, install
the module for your kernel. I do not know if ndiswrapper works for kernel
2.4 If this is simply an old distro, it is probably just as well it does
not work, since your distro has a huge number of unpatched holes and your
computer would be a positive meance on the net. If it is say debian then
your distro should have a version of ndiswrapper appropriate for your
kernel.



>I am used to binary packages and have no clue how to install ndiswrapper
>in another way and create kernel modules 2.4! Is this at least possible?

Sure it is. Just make sure that you have kernel source installed, go into
the ndiswrapper source directory and run make.



>Please explain to me, how to get ndiswrapper working with kernel 2.4. I
>think I've done anything else right. Output of user utilities say so.

Not enough information provided.


>Daniel Böhmer, Germany

The distro ist Debian 3.1 called Sarge. Anywhere on the Debian page I
had read that the kernel 2.4 would run more stable and therefor I
installed it instead of 2.6.

apt-get is telling me that there are only packages for kernel 2.6 available.

I should have written that I already tried "modprobe ndiswrapper" and
"modprobe wlan0". Both causes the message I mentioned that the device
could not be found.


By now I have solved the problem. All to be done was to go to
ndiwrapper's source and run "make", "make install". Now it works.

Unfortunately I don't how to create a managed network with the card as
Master. By entering "mode Master" it says this was an invalid argument.
But "mode Ad-Hoc" works. Is it possible that the D-Link 520+ doesn't
support running as AP?

Daniel

I failed to get ndiswrapper using Managed mode and found out that
NDISWRAPPER DOES NOT SUPPORT IT. This is incredible! I thought once
ndiswrapper is working there is no problem with it anymore, but it seems
to me that I'll have to install the real drivers in any way.

The problem is that I don't how to install them. However, this is gonna
be a new topic here. So thanks for you helping me to install ndiswrapper
itself.

Daniel

In comp.os.linux.networking Daniel B?hmer <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> Hello NG,

> as you may have read I just bought a D-Link 520+ wireless NIC. Now I am
> trying to get it working, but until now failing.

> Due to the nonexistence of any open-source drivers for this chipset I
> was recommended to use ndiswrapper. I installed ndiswrapper properly and

Why on earth, if you buy a new card do you get one which is only
supported by ndiswrapper? I'd return the card asap and get
something supported. Iirc you posted some question about
supported cards recently and got despite mine some answers what
will work without resorting to 'ndiswrapper'. That was a good
idea checking for known to work easily devices before actually
getting one, why you just did the opposite then is beyond me.

[..]

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 209: Only people with names beginning with 'A'
are getting mail this week (a la Microsoft)

I asked because nobody in the shops could tell me whether their cards
were supported or not. "The vendor does not print it on the package."

But in the last and the next week I've got the possibility to work quite
hard on it. You know, my timetable is quite full (Who one's is not?). So
I wanted to get the card quickly. When I realized that there is no
supported card available in shops around here, I decided to have a try
with ndiswrapper. I've got another card working with it and still think
it is very good. Unfortunately I didn't know that Master mode is not
supported...

In comp.os.linux.networking Daniel B?hmer <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> I asked because nobody in the shops could tell me whether their cards
> were supported or not. "The vendor does not print it on the package."

What would you expect, it's rare to find competent stuff in some
small hardware shop.

> But in the last and the next week I've got the possibility to work quite
> hard on it. You know, my timetable is quite full (Who one's is not?). So
> I wanted to get the card quickly. When I realized that there is no
> supported card available in shops around here, I decided to have a try

So just order one online.

[..]

BTW
Please quote while following up and trim irrelevant parts. Thx

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 381: Robotic tape changer mistook operator's tie
for a backup tape.