[CentOS-docs] Wiki - Wireless Network with ndiswrapper

[Dag Wieers]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008, robert pierson wrote:

> Not being particularly saavy I was not able to get ndiswrapper working 
> with the generic instructions provided and went to a few other sites to 
> cobble the information together to get the wireless magic to work...  
> Though I suppose it probably makes sense not to get too detailed and 
> then clutter up the wiki with misc. mumbo jumbo. 
>
> Here was the draft I created -
>
> For the Dell D830 with the Dell
> Wireless 1390/1395 cards that are recognized (using lspci -vnn) as
> Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controllers.
>
> The B43 driver and fwcutter application
> will not work.  You may find ndiswrapper more suitable.
>
> yum install wine
> yum install ndiswrapper
>
> (1) mkdir /ndiswrapper_drivers
> (2) cd /ndiswrapper_drivers
> (3) wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R174291.exe
> (4) wine R174291.exe

I did a little test. usually you can extract files from executables either 
by using cabextract or unzip. And in this case you can simply do:

     unzip R174291.exe

So we can drop the wine dependency.

> (5) Specify the location where it is
> going to be installed preferrably /ndiswrapper_drivers
> (6) cd
> DRIVER
> (7) Assuming that you have already ndiswrapper
> installed:
> ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
> (8) ndiswrapper -l (to
> check if its installed)
> you should get an output similar to
> this
> bcmwl5 : driver installed
> device (14E4:4315) present
> (9)
> sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
> (10) now i suggest you restart you
> computer
> (12) And then you can enable NetworkManager to use it.

So to be honest I think we can write up some instructions for 
ndiswrapper that are less specific to your situation. What I see is:

  - Locate and download the windows drivers
  - Extract the archive (cabextract, unzip or use wine)
  - Use ndiswrapper on the .inf file
  - Verify that it installed correctly
  - Load ndiswrapper module

And as an example you could give the instructions for your wireless card.

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at centos.org,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]