WG111 usb wi-fi configuration in Knoppix 3.6

[Mr_Mike]

I'm having a devil of a time getting my wireless usb adapter working with Knoppix 3.6. Anyone want to help?

I read over Grant's sticky post and got nowhere.

I'm using the CDROM supplied .sys and .inf files.

ndiswrapper -i /etc/netgear/netwg111.inf
returns Installing netwg111.
ndiswrapper -l returns "Installed ndis drivers: netwg111", thus I assume this worked.

modprobe ndiswrapper returns no response (which I guess is expected)

Modprobe -l shows wlan.ko, ndiswrapper.ko, usbnet.ko, usbcore.ko, among others. Don't know what is or is not important here.

iwconfig wlan0 essid any
returns "Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A). Set failed on device wlan0; no such device."

I assumed I'm hosed at this point.

iwconfig wlan0 channel 11
returns same error.

ifconfig wlan0 up
returns no such device. ifconfig returns data for eth0 and l0, but nothing resembling a wireless connection.

What am I doing wrong?

I'm not the smartest tool in the linux shed. I've done a little unix work and have (years ago) installed linux from floppies w/o networking.

Thanks in advance.

[Mr_Mike]

I should add that this is a hard drive installation on a Dell D600 laptop.

The laptop drive was set-up using a desktop machine and then the drive was moved to the laptop.

[chopperman]

THis may sound simplistic (I didnt understand some of what you posted, so you might be rolling your eyes at me)

To get the internal broadcom wifi to work on my laptop I had to:

1) download drivers and extract the .inf (there were more than one)
2) NDIS from the knoppix menu and through trial and error get the right .inf
3) run the Netcard config tool from the Knoppix/internet menu so that DHCP broadcast was enabled
4) then run wavelan from the knoppix/internet menu to config the card.

then I had wireless connection to my AP

[Mr_Mike]

That would probably work if I had the internal wireless card. But I don't.

I haven't had any joy getting anything in the Knoppix menu to work for me. Don't have any specifics I can quote until I get home and try again.

[chopperman]

That would probably work if I had the internal wireless card. But I don't.

I haven't had any joy getting anything in the Knoppix menu to work for me. Don't have any specifics I can quote until I get home and try again.

If the PCMCIA knows what it is, the rest *should*(?) go as I described. I also have an antique cisco 340 PCMCIA that is automagically setup. And a Buffalo card that is just a wasted of power when plugging it in to the PCMCIA. The system just ignores it. So you might be in the latter case I think

[Mr_Mike]

That would probably work if I had the internal wireless card. But I don't.

I haven't had any joy getting anything in the Knoppix menu to work for me. Don't have any specifics I can quote until I get home and try again.

If the PCMCIA knows what it is, the rest *should*(?) go as I described. I also have an antique cisco 340 PCMCIA that is automagically setup. And a Buffalo card that is just a wasted of power when plugging it in to the PCMCIA. The system just ignores it. So you might be in the latter case I think

Not PCMCIA, its USB. I wanted a device that was fairly universal. I knew that these were poorly supported in linux, but there was enough literature available to know its do-able. Its just not do-able for me yet.

You have to have wireless stuff working, usb stuff working, ndis stuff working and apparently other stuff I have not figured out yet.

[grant_vallance]

Mr_Mike,

I would not give up just yet ...

1. What is the chipset? -- I had a look on the master list but your model is not listed for some reason (at least that I could find).
lspci
or
lsusb

I believe should give you a clue ...

The reason I ask is that different versions of ndiswrapper are more or less compatible with different versions of the same chipset driver. E.g. For the Belkin 765D7000/7010 different versions using the same chipset require different versions of the driver and IIRC it also depends on the version of ndiswrapper.

That should be enough to start with.

I'll try and be of assistance.

Regards,

Grant D. Vallance

PS. NOT a GNU/Linux guru, but only someone who managed to get his wireless working and post a coherentish post about it. Oh and someone willing to learn :-)

[Mr_Mike]

Mr_Mike,

I would not give up just yet ...

1. What is the chipset? -- I had a look on the master list but your model is not listed for some reason (at least that I could find).
lspci
or
lsusb

I believe should give you a clue ...

The reason I ask is that different versions of ndiswrapper are more or less compatible with different versions of the same chipset driver. E.g. For the Belkin 765D7000/7010 different versions using the same chipset require different versions of the driver and IIRC it also depends on the version of ndiswrapper.

That should be enough to start with.

I'll try and be of assistance.

Regards,

Grant D. Vallance

PS. NOT a GNU/Linux guru, but only someone who managed to get his wireless working and post a coherentish post about it. Oh and someone willing to learn :-)

I don't know what master list you used. The Ndiswrapper wiki shows:

***
Card: NETGEAR WG111 verison 2 802.11g Wireless USB2.0 Adapter
Chipset: Prism54
usbid: 0846:4240
Driver: Netgear windows driver Version: NETGEAR, Inc.,10/05/2004, 2.1 from http://www.netgear.com
Other: Works well. To get the driver, unzip it. The ndis drivers are in the ndis directory. Used kernel Running Slackware v10.1 (kernel 2.6.10) ndiswrapper ver 1.1rc3 . There is a native driver for Prism54 that is working on USB support. Veiw its status at Prism54.org
***

That matches my card. Its a WG111 V2. There are a couple of other entries for the WG111 V2 as well.

So far, it seems that what I need to do is upgrade to ndiswrapper V 1.1 or so. The version of ndiswrapper included with Knoppix 3.6 is 0.81 (or 0.80 maybe).

So, I started the process of upgrading ndiswrapper and probably completely screwed up my installation. I've deleted all the ndiswrapper stuff, but I don't have the new ndiswrapper source properly installed. Also, I apparently need the kernel version 2.6.7 headers (which are not included on the Knoppix CD either). Knoppix 3.6 has the kernel 2.4.x source with patches to 2.6, but I have no clue how to use this to get version 2.6 headers. Thus, I have no idea where to go from here. I think I'm going to download the Knoppix V 3.8 CeBit disk and start over. That should have kernel 2.6.x and might have a newer version of ndiswrapper. At least thats what I hope. Its not too hard to reload the hard disk. There is really no personal data on the disk and the small changes I've made to lilo and the Xfree config are simple.

I'm not ready to give up for sure.

[grant_vallance]

Another thing to try is Knoppix 3.7 I'd try the Live CD first b/f installing it on the laptop.

It has been said that it offers better out-of-the-box wireless support.

Its strange that the 'card' does not work, because it was impression that the Prism chipset was supported natively in most newer versions of the kernel.

I am sure we will get it working eventually ... 8)

[Mr_Mike]

Another thing to try is Knoppix 3.7 I'd try the Live CD first b/f installing it on the laptop.

It has been said that it offers better out-of-the-box wireless support.

Its strange that the 'card' does not work, because it was impression that the Prism chipset was supported natively in most newer versions of the kernel.

I am sure we will get it working eventually ... 8)

Knoppix 3.7, out-of-the-box doesn't work. Been there, done that in my desktop machine. Neither does 3.6.

On the laptop, I do not have a bootable CDROM. (truth be told, its a corporate laptop and the bios is locked so the CDROM won't boot. Unlocking the bios leaves evidence of tampering). I can boot to a HDD though. So I used the desktop to load a Knoppix system on the laptop drive and reinstalled the drive in the laptop.

You can see the card using lsusb. Thus, the basic USB support is there. I can even mount and use a flash drive.

Tonight, if I have time, I will try the Knoppix 3.8 Live CD on the desktop computer. I have other pressing issues like getting my taxes done that need to come first...

[Mr_Mike]

Well, I'm making progress. Booting up the Knoppix 3.8 CeBit stuff on my desktop with the USB wireless dongle installed is starting to work. After installing the drivers using ndiswrapper I get blinking lights on the dongle. The Knoppix WANsetup tool does a little bit of magic as well. It doesn't talk yet though.

So, it looks like some of the newer software on the 3.8 disk is what was required. I suspect it was the later version of ndiswrapper.

Now I'll re-image the laptop HDD and give it a go. No point in proceeding with the desktop at this stage.

Wish me luck...

[Mr_Mike]

Apparently I have success.

Things to note: I had to use:

iwconfig wlan0 essid "my_network"

I had to quote my network name for some reason. The network name is one word. Whatever works!

Its midnight:30 so robustness testing will have to wait...