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NDISwrapper in Fedora using Dell TrueMobile 1300

Submitted by sandip on Sat, 10/09/2004 - 12:35

This step-by-step walk through is for Fedora CORE 1.0 using a Dell Latitude CPi with the PCMCIA Dell TrueMobile 1300 (BroadCom BCM94306) 802.11b/g wireless network card.

Install the ndiswrapper by following the installation wiki documentation.

NOTE: I was getting errors with the current release and 0.9 version finally worked for me, so try installing previous releases and use the one which works for you.

Below are the steps that I took:
1. Install the ndiswrapper using the rpm.

#tar -zxvf ndiswrapper.tar.gz
#cd ndiswrapper
#make rpm
#rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/ndiswrapper*.rpm

2. Install the windows driver as described in the infFile using ndiswrapper. You should have a ".inf" and a ".sys" file for this to work.

#mount /mnt/cdrom (place the Dell TrueMobile Driver disk in the cdrom first)
#ndiswrapper -i /mnt/cdrom/Setup/bcmwl5.inf

3. Load the ndiswrapper module

#modprobe ndiswrapper

The light on the card should turn on at this point.

4. Create and setup the network parameters for the interface wlan0. 

#cat <<EOF > /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
>DEVICE=wlan0
>BOOTPROTO=dhcp
>ONBOOT=yes
>GATEWAY=192.168.2.1
>TYPE=Wireless
>ESSID=<ESSID of your Access Point>
>CHANNEL=<CHANNEL # of your AP>
>MODE=Managed
>KEY=<your hex key>
>EOF

5. Configure the wireless network interface

#iwconfig (look for your wlan card, mine came up with wlan0)
#iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
#iwconfig wlan0 key <your hex key>
#iwconifg wlan0 essid <ESSID of your Access Point>
#ifconfig wlan0 <IP Address>
#route add default gw <192.168.2.1>
#ifup wlan0

I got an error but then it said '... done'.

6. Check the wireless interface is up.

#ifconfig (should list out wlan0 with an inet address)
#ping 192.168.2.1 (Voila success!!)

When this worked I instantly went to linuxweblog.com and noted down these steps for reference.

7. Instead of automating the modprobe settings to load ndiswrapper as mentioned in the install docs via `ndiswrapper -m`, I put `modprobe ndiswrapper` in the "rc.local" file.

#cat <<EOF >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local
># Load ndiswrapper module
>modprobe ndiswrapper
>EOF

Additionally, you can now also run the `redhat-config-network` gui to set up the wireless network... Welcome to the wireless world!!

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ndiswrapper on Fedora Core 5 using livna repo

Submitted by sandip on Fri, 05/26/2006 - 09:03.

I currently use the livna repository to update ndiswrapper via yum for the latest kernel -- 2.6.16-1.2122_FC5.

  1. Add livna repo to the yum list:
    # cat<<EOF > /etc/yum.repos.d/livna.repo
[livna]
name=Livna for Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/$basearch
        http://livna.cat.pdx.edu/fedora/$releasever/$basearch
        http://wftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/livna/fedora/$releasever/$basearch
        http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/$basearch
failovermethod=priority
#mirrorlist=http://rpm.livna.org/mirrorlist-5
enabled=0
gpgcheck=1
EOF
  2. Install ndiswrapper and its kernel module: 
    # yum --enablerepo=livna update ndiswrapper kmod-ndiswrapper
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Fedora Core 3 and Dell TrueMobile 1400

Submitted by nepalexpo on Sun, 03/06/2005 - 00:23.

I have this installed and working on Fedora CORE 3 using a Dell Latitude D800 with the TrueMobile 1400 (BroadCom BCM4309) 802.11b/g wireless network card.

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Ndiswrapper with Fedora Core 3

Submitted by sandip on Wed, 02/09/2005 - 22:10.

Upgraded system to Fedora Core release 3 (Heidelberg) and had to re-install ndiswrapper and the driver.

Apparently I was using a windows driver (bcmwl5.inf) with a stack size of more than 4k. Fedora has an option to enable/disable 4k stack size. If you are running a Fedora 2.6 kernel and your machine freezes after running `modprobe ndiswrapper`, you are probably using a driver that requires a stack size greater than 4K. Try installing the 16K stack kernel update from Linuxant:

Fedora Core 3/i686: http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/wlan/full/downloads-fc3-kernel-i686.php
Fedora Core 3/i586: http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/wlan/full/downloads-fc3-kernel-i586.php

Find out the exact kernel architecture (which is not always the same as "uname -m") with the following:

# rpm -q --qf '%{ARCH}\n' kernel

Download the complete kernel RPM and install it using rpm -Uhv as root. Advanced users may want to use the patch instead, or try compiling a vanilla kernel (from http://www.kernel.org) and disabling 4K stack size (CONFIG_4KSTACKS).

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