Wireless for the Gateway Laptop 4012GZ on Fedora Core 4 July 7, 2005 (*j*)

The document

http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20040507104718960

and

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Installation

were the ones I used to get the ndis wrapper working.

This was the result of google searches with keywords like

“ndis wrapper wireless device driver fedora core 4 installation”.

The best I could with a fedora core 4 was the first one above and the following will

be notes on the documents above of my experience with the ndiswrapper:

As root:

I used the ndiswrapper-2.1 from sourceforge. I created a directory in source as

/lib/modules/<YourKernel>/source to place the results of the

tar xzvf ndiswrapper-2.1.tar.gz

My kernel is 2.6.11-1.1369_FC4

I did a

make distclean

make

make install

Verified the results with

ll /lib/modules/<YourKernel>/misc

and ndiswrapper.ko was the result.

Also a

whereis loadndisdriver ndiswrapper wlan_radio_averatec_5110hx

responded as indicated except that wlan_radio_averatec_5110 was not found.

I found bcmwl5 drivers on the web but chose to use the existing drivers on the

winXP as they were newer and larger. They are in Drivers\Wireless directory in the winXP partition. I copied the bcmwl5.sys and bcmwl5.inf files to fedora 4 using a memory stick (next step is an NTFS mount from fedora in fstab) and placed them in

a home (/root) directory: /root/fedora4/drivers.

Issued the command:

/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -i /root/fedora4/drivers/bcmwl5.inf

the output was one line with something like “Installed ndis drivers: bcmwl5 present”

As indicated, this “copies all necessary files to /etc/ndiswrapper and creates the config files (but not all of them) for your card”. One is not done yet. Bringing up the NIC is next.

ndiswrapper -l

shows the status of your installed drivers and should respond “Installed ndis drivers: bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present” if all is well.

Load module:

modprobe ndiswrapper

returns nothing but that is good (You get no error).

Check the system log my the command

dmesg

to check if the driver is loaded by looking in the last few lines for the characters:

“ndiswrapper version 1.2 loaded”.

Also a following line in the dmesg should say

“ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5 added.

In addition a config file is needed in the /etc directory sysconfig/network-scripts/

I had one script ifcfg-eth0 which I chose to leave alone for the broadband cable connection should I use it. I created a new conf file ifcfg-wlan0 and editing it manually:

My ESSID or name of the wireless router transmitting a signal was “linksys” a default.

cat ifcfg-wlan0

MODE=Managed

ESSID=linksys

DEVICE=wlan0

BOOTPROTO=dhcp

TYPE=Wireless

To find the ESSID one can issue:

iwlist wlan0 scan

which returns the details of the wireless router(s).

The other configuration entries to the ifcfg-wlan0 file can be set with iwconfig command:

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed

iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys

as well as

encryption.

An example of a more complete config file is from http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions

MODE=Auto
ESSID=
HWADDR=
DEVICE=wlan0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
USERCTL=yes
PEERDNS=yes
TYPE=Wireless
RATE=Auto
IPV6INIT=no
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
GATEWAY=
CHANNEL=1

where the response to the “iwlist wlan0 scan” should be checked for values.

Finally (as per instructions)

ifup wlan0

should start the wireless network however I needed to reboot or

/etc/init.d/network restart

to get things working.

Finally I did a

ndiswrapper -m

to make the module alias once everything was working.

My kernel is not enabled for the "4K option" needed by ndisdriver (I see a warning during compilation). Anyway, it is working pretty well. One other note is a warning about the wrong version (compatibility) for the driver was mentioned

in the dmesg but this did not seem to be a problem. The laptop attempts to connect to the broadband cable connection if it is present and when it fails it dhcp's the wireless and if the signal is found it will start. Use the “iwlist wlan0 scan” command to find the names of other wireless sources that are local and change the entry in the ifcfg-wlan0 config file to access them if appropriate.