Netgear WG511v2 on Debian Issues

[sachin_kothari]

I bought the Netgear WG511v2 wireless PC Card.
I know there are no direct drivers for it on linux.
So i used ndiswrapper and installed the windows xp driver available on the CD.
Now, ndiswrapper says i have installed the driver

 ndiswrapper -l
installed drivers:
wg511v2         driver installed, hardware (11AB:1FAB) present

i then ran ifconfig and iwconfig
ifconfig

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:9F:CC:9F:E2
          inet addr:192.168.1.4  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::2c0:9fff:fecc:9fe2/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:735 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:778 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:635250 (620.3 KiB)  TX bytes:142597 (139.2 KiB)
          Interrupt:201 Base address:0x3000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:560 (560.0 b)  TX bytes:560 (560.0 b)

iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth1      no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.

my /etc/network/interfaces file looks like this

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

The problem is i cant start my card. The LED's on the card dont blink. What's wrong?

[mediator]

1. On my laptop u enable/disable the wireless by "special key"+F2. Is there something like that for ur card?
2. Is the card connected properly?
3. What Linux distro version are u using?
4. Did u load the driver into the kernel?

Neways this may help u!
http://declanmcgrath.wordpress.com/2...card-on-linux/

and this may give some idea to u!
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=165964

[sachin_kothari]

1. that is if u have wifi with the laptop itself. mine is an external card so no such feature.
2. the card works fine on windows, so yes, it is connected properly.
3. Debian 4.0 Etch 2.6.18
4. this seems to be the step i missed. will check the links and report back once done.

edit:
i tried but i could not make a module to be inserted to kernel
it gives error as

couldn't add module alias: at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper-1.9 line 717

[mediator]

Can u post the sequence of commands u entered?

[sachin_kothari]

ndiswrapper -i path_to_inf
ndiswrapper -l (shows that driver installed and device present)
modprobe ndiswrapper (error - ndiswrapper module not found)

[mediator]

Originally Posted by sachin_kothari

ndiswrapper -i path_to_inf
ndiswrapper -l (shows that driver installed and device present)
modprobe ndiswrapper (error - ndiswrapper module not found)

1. ndiswrapper -i path_to_inf
2. ndiswrapper -l
3. sudo ndiswrapper -m
4. sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
5. iwconfig

(did u write sudo ?)......Try these steps now!

[sachin_kothari]

i already did all the above steps as root user.

[praka123]

so no ndiswrapper module?

[sachin_kothari]

no. i did all the above mentioned things from my home directory.

[mediator]

1. If u followed the sequence of steps I gave, then it shud have worked. Now did u install the correct "inf" file? Here u have the drivers and u can take out the inf file!!

2. In Ubuntu's site it says

Can not modprobe ndiswrapper, fatal error given.
This error is usually given when ndiswrapper is compiled and installed. You have a bad installation or you didn't remove the module that came with Ubuntu. You need to uninstall ndiswrapper and make sure you remove the ndiswrapper module that came with Ubuntu. Instructions on how to uninstall ndiswrapper can be found [WWW] here

So did u remove the module that came with debian? Neways I suggest u follow this guide. Its on ubuntu, but since ubuntu is based on debain I guess it shudn't give u any problems issuing the same commands!!


3. I was also having some problems with this ndiswrapper thingy, but when I installed network-manager-gnome everything went fine. So u may try this too!
http://technowizah.com/2007/02/debia...orks-with.html

[sachin_kothari]

got my wireless card working
i downloaded the latest drivers from ndiswrapper and compiled them.
and then followed the steps as mentioned in post no. 6
and then, it worked.
thanks a lot mediator for all the help u provided.

now one last question.
when i restarted my computer the card did not start.
i did modprobe ndiswrapper and the card started again.
how do i make sure that the card starts automatically everytime the system boots?

[mediator]

Gawd, I started wondering what went wrong! Neways to automate the process

1. Follow this!

OR

2. U can use a shell script! Tell if this shell script works for u. I haven't tested it on my system coz mine is FC and Ubuntu is inaccessible right now!

modprobe ndiswrapper

a. Save this code as say "wireless_sachin.sh"
b. Copy this to "/etc/init.d" as root!

sudo cp wireless_sachin.sh /etc/init.d/

c. "sudo chmod +x wireless_sachin.sh"
d. "update-rc.d wireless_sachin.sh defaults"

Since this is just an untested script, I dont expect it to work. But u may still give it a shot!!

[sachin_kothari]

it worked flawlessly.
thanks again for all the support.