Problems with Belkin WiFi

**iD:0t** · 01-02-2005, 12:01 AM

I'm currently having issues with installing my wireless NIC under Knoppix v3.6 and v3.7 (using the 2.6 kernel). The card is a Belkin F5D7000uk 802.11g card, and it runs a Broadcom chipset (bcmwl5.inf). I have run the ndiswrapper tool in Knoppix using it's graphical frontend, when i locate my .inf file and hit OK, the program closes and Linux freezes. Darn! BUT... When I run ndiswrapper through the shell, as root user, it says it has installed the drivers, along with a message that theres no such thing as /etc/..... or something like that. And the iwconfig cannot see any network adapters installed. Any ideas as to what I should do now? I want to get this ironed out before I proceed with installing Knoppix to my hard drive.

Thanks.

**grant_vallance** · 01-02-2005, 01:39 PM

Originally Posted by iD:0t

I'm currently having issues with installing my wireless NIC under Knoppix v3.6 and v3.7 (using the 2.6 kernel). The card is a Belkin F5D7000uk 802.11g card, and it runs a Broadcom chipset (bcmwl5.inf). I have run the ndiswrapper tool in Knoppix using it's graphical frontend, when i locate my .inf file and hit OK, the program closes and Linux freezes. Darn! BUT... When I run ndiswrapper through the shell, as root user, it says it has installed the drivers, along with a message that theres no such thing as /etc/..... or something like that. And the iwconfig cannot see any network adapters installed. Any ideas as to what I should do now? I want to get this ironed out before I proceed with installing Knoppix to my hard drive.

Thanks.

Hello.

Hmmm... this sounds strange.

I use both a Belkin F5D7000uk and F5D7010uk card with Knoppix with no problems. Indeed I posted a HowTo which is a sticky in this forum.

I have never had or heard of this problem.

A couple of things to start with:

1. What version of the card are you using? -- I am using v2.
2. Have you tried it with 2.4? and if you have, have you been successful?
3. Try installing the bcmwl5.inf file from your installation CD into a high level directory under M$; e.g. C:\ say call it C:\Belkin and try the proceedure from there. I would also include all the files that occur with the bcmwl5.inf as well. I am not sure whether they are needed but this is what I did and it worked...

Report back and hopefully we can get you sorted out ...

However, regarding an HD install ... I have heard that HD installs are not straightforward under Knoppix -- unless the situation has changed in the last month or so. If you want a distro that is simple and powerful for a first HD install I can highly recommend MEPIS. I am using that and getting used to it first before trying to install Knoppix.

Hope to help.

Regards,

Grant D. Vallance

**iD:0t** · 01-02-2005, 05:40 PM

Right,

1) I am using the Belkin Card, Version 1133uk
2) I did try the same install procedures under 2.4 kernel, but got the same problems.
3) I have tried accessing the .inf file and all others from different locations (i.e. the Belkin CD, another HDD) but still no progress.

However, I'm going to retry all this stuff to see what happens this time!

Yours,

Alistair Millar.

**tom p** · 01-02-2005, 06:57 PM

Hi,

the drivers from the Belkin WLAN installation CD caused my system also to freeze;
the Wiki at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/p...index.php/List was
very helpful: the recommended drivers from the Dell page work like a charm.

Ciao,
Thomas

**grant_vallance** · 01-02-2005, 08:45 PM

Originally Posted by tom p

Hi,

the drivers from the Belkin WLAN installation CD caused my system also to freeze;
the Wiki at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/p...index.php/List was
very helpful: the recommended drivers from the Dell page work like a charm.

Ciao,
Thomas

I am happy to send you my drivers if yours keep failing since they at least work, and perhaps they will with yours ...

Hope you are successful ...

Regards,

Grant D. Vallance

**pureone** · 01-02-2005, 09:26 PM

i need a copy of the rlt8180L 170 drivers they no londer do them on there site

ftp://202.65.194.18/cn/wlan/rtl8180l/ndis5x-8180(170).zip

has anyone got a copy?

**iD:0t** · 01-03-2005, 02:54 PM

Ok, I'll download the drivers frok the Dell site and report back....

**iD:0t** · 01-03-2005, 05:45 PM

Right, I downloaded all the Belkin files and put them in a high level directory, i.e. /mnt/hdb5/Belkin Linux.

I tried all the .inf files in all the different directories, but nothing installed my network card, iwconfig still reported no network devices installed.

It's getting annoying, please, any more suggestions??!!

**grant_vallance** · 01-03-2005, 06:45 PM

Originally Posted by iD:0t

Right, I downloaded all the Belkin files and put them in a high level directory, i.e. /mnt/hdb5/Belkin Linux.

I tried all the .inf files in all the different directories, but nothing installed my network card, iwconfig still reported no network devices installed.

It's getting annoying, please, any more suggestions??!!

Sure ...

I do not know whether they will be useful ...

1. Rename higher-level directory to: Belkin

It probably will make know difference but I am concerned with folder recognition ...

2. Try again ...

3. I can send you my drivers; which work for my cards, and ostensibly are the same model, although I believe they are different versions.

4. Describe the exact install proceedures (in painful detail) describing what you are doing to get the card up-and-running. Who knows it could be something simple you are missing. Unfortunately I cannot read minds -- and Oxford is a little too far away to provide immediate personal help

.

4b. E.g. After the command: ndiswrapper -i /mnt//hdb5/Belkin Linux/bcmwl5.inf have you typed modprobe ndiswrapper?

5. Try another distro: I.e. MEPIS

Hopefully, we will get you sorted soon.

Regards,

Grant D. Vallance

**tom p** · 01-03-2005, 06:55 PM

Originally Posted by iD:0t

Right, I downloaded all the Belkin files and put them in a high level directory, i.e. /mnt/hdb5/Belkin Linux.

I tried all the .inf files in all the different directories, but nothing installed my network card, iwconfig still reported no network devices installed.

It's getting annoying, please, any more suggestions??!!

ok; can you provide some more details? I'd be interested in the output of "lspci" and "lspci -nv" (from an xterm or the console -
no need to post all of the output, you should easily figure out which lines are interesting/important

)

Have you tried both kernel version 2.4 and 2.6? I've had success with kernel 2.6. And the driver I'm using right now is
bcmwl5a.inf located in the "ir" directory of the dell files.

Next: you can run the script "ndiswrapper.sh" by hand as user "root"; does this provide further information not being displayed
when running the graphical tool? This wrapper script basically calls

ndiswrapper -i $DRIVER_PATH
modprobe ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -m

with $DRIVER_PATH being the full path to the bcmwl5a.inf file. You might try to run each of the commands by hand. Maybe this
gives some more clues as to what goes wrong.

Finally, if the script ran sucessfully, it should have created a subdirectory beyond /etc/ndiswrapper/ with the name of the
driver file (bcmwl5a) containg some .inf, .sys and .conf files; the .conf file names consist of numbers separated by ":"
built from PCI vendor, device, PCI subvendor, device. You should find these numbers in your "lspci -nv" output.

I hope I haven't confused you too much

Thomas