Wlan, ndiswrapper, bcm43xx and "line 720" in /usr/

[caola]

On laptop HP dv5094Ea, XP(2), I installed live knoppix 5.1.1, copied bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys to linux Desktop, added as root "blacklist bcm43xx" to /etc/modeprobe.d/blacklist, and at root shell did:

rmmod bcm43xx
ndiswrapper -i /home/knoppix/Desktop/bcmwl.inf
ndiswrapper -l
modprobe ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -m
netcardconfig
.
.
ifup wlan0 (or eth1) ... which failed

After "ndiswrapper -m" I got message ~ "alias wlan0 added .. could not add alias module at /usr/sbin/udr(?) Line 720". All operations and messages before this seemed o.k., in particular "ndiswrapper -l" gave ~" driver installed, device IE ..4318 .. (approx.) present (alt driver bcm43xx)".

Am I near to a wireless internet connect to my PC(XP2)? Any help welcomed, I am ~PC literate but need simple linux instruction steps.

In hope, Michael Caola

[Ben Geber]

Am I near to a wireless internet connect to my PC(XP2)? Any help welcomed, I am ~PC literate but need simple linux instruction steps.

Short answer - it seems you may be close. I am still getting the same "line 720" error, but the wireless connnection works flawlessly.

After some trials and tributions, I finally managed to get the wireless connection working on three different Dell Inspiron PC's (Inspiron 600m, Inspiron 2200 and Inspiron B130) using Knoppix 5.1.1 on the same USB memory stick. ALL the driver files (using DELL's driver at the URL below) are in a subfolder called wlandriver. Apparently, it is important to have ALL the driver files (see list at end of message) in that subfolder.

My quick-and-dirty startwlan script looks like this:

• echo startwlan executing
  cd /
  mkdir /mnt/sda1
  mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
  cd /mnt/sda1/wlandriver
  echo test
  modprobe -r bcm43xx
  rm -f /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper
  modprobe -r ndiswrapper
  ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5
  ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
  ndiswrapper -l
  ndiswrapper -m
  depmod -a
  modprobe ndiswrapper
  iwconfig
  #OMIT next line if no WEP used, otherwise insert your WEP number
  #in hyphenated form as shown
  iwconfig eth1 key open 1234-5678-90
  #Insert your router ID as last word in next line
  iwconfig eth1 essid MYNETWORK
  ifconfig wlan0 up
  ifconfig eth1 up
  pump -i wlan0
  pump -i eth1
  cd /mnt/sda1
  iwconfig
  

Many of these commands are probably superfluous, but the script seems to work. iwconfig is invoked several times to check the status of the connection. Blacklisting is not needed since the script uninstalls the buggy native driver.

If you find ndiswrapper installing to a different port (e.g. eth0), you may need to tweak the script accordingly. The port assignments may change from one invocation to the next.

The script was edited in the root shell using nano and written to /mnt/sda1 (after mount /dev/sda1). Knoppix seems to make newly created files executable by default, no chmod was required.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers,
Ben.

URL of the DELL wireless driver that works with KNOPPIX NDISWRAPPER
http://support.dell.com/support/down...&fileid=187881

• Volume in drive C is C-Disk
  Volume Serial Number is 7CD0-B04A
  
  Directory of C:\DELL\drivers\R140747\DRIVER
  
  03/26/2007 12:54 AM <DIR> .
  03/26/2007 12:54 AM <DIR> ..
  11/03/2006 02:07 PM 10,496 bcm43xx.cat
  11/03/2006 02:07 PM 10,520 bcm43xx64.cat
  10/12/2006 04:29 PM 640,898 bcmwl5.inf
  10/12/2006 04:28 PM 604,928 bcmwl5.sys
  10/12/2006 04:28 PM 754,688 bcmwl564.sys
  5 File(s) 2,021,530 bytes
  2 Dir(s) 4,547,493,888 bytes free