It seems that my computer can't find the wlan0 interface.
I'm following all the instructions at the link posted by sgsax under "ndiswrapper installation and configuration" (which are the best I've seen so far, but then I'm only a newbie), and I can't get my kernel to register the interface. At least, that's what the problem seems to be. When I CD to /etc/sysconfig/hardware, and type $ getcfg-all-info command for my wireless card, what I get is
I think the problem is in the line HWD_INTERFACE_N=0, and the fact that the line HWD_INTERFACE_0= is missing.
Some more info that may be relevant: ndiswrapper seemed to install fine without any error messages. When I do $ ndiswrapper -l, I get
Installed ndis drivers: lsbcmnds driver present
It says nothing about the hardware, and I don't know if that's a problem. I can get to the hardware config in yast, and that doesn't seem to have any problems. My hardware is a PCMCIA Lynksis WPC54G. I had it in the slot when I installed SuSE 10.0, so I don't know if that would have messed things up. Also, if I go to /etc/sysconfig/network and type
I don't know enough about ndiswrapper to be of much more help. I did find a some references which mentioned that you need to have your kernel source for it to work properly. Other people have gotten this card to work using ndiswrapper. Some have just given up and purchased a card that has native support in the kernel (this one doesn't, obviously). I did see this super-short howto on a debian forum: <blockquote> $ sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper $ sudo ndiswrapper -i windows_driver.inf $ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper $ sudo sh -c 'echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules'
Of course, you also have to edit /etc/network/interfaces and bring up the interface -- note that ndiswrapper by default will use wlan0 (not eth?) as the interface name. </blockquote>
I don't know if that helps you any, but it looks fairly straightforward. I bought a Cisco Aironet 350 myself. It has native drivers and is better than any other wifi card I've ever seen, in linux or Windows.
1. You're going to have install a kernel module aswell. All the ndiswrapping is done at the kernel level. I've actually had alot more luck compiling everything from sourceforge source, rather than using the deb packages.
2. Also, You have todo a
ndiswrapper -m
This will input the ndiswrapper modules stuff in the correct config files. I do this after the installation of the windows driver.
3. I've never used susie (Ubuntu/Gentoo here), but I can't get configurators to work with ndiswrapper. Instead, I wrote a script (its somewhere in the forum) to load up my interface using iwconfig and iwlist.
4. If you compile your own kernel, you have to turn on kernel hacking so you can turn off 4kb kernels. Its not on by default, but i couldn't get ndiswrapper to behave if the option wasn't there to be deselected.
All my experence with ndiswrapper has been blotchy and I've had to play with it until it works, but when it works, it works consistantly.