Linux wireless support & ndiswrapper : Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

This HOWTO is under construction. If you get stuck you are welcome to post a comment or email me directly.

Things to remember:

The wireless driver that came on your CD is probably NOT the right driver.

You need to run all commands below at the terminal. If you are uncomfortable using the terminal you may have some trouble here.

At step #4 we are matching the PCI ID and not the make and model. You will need the PCI ID from steps 2 and 3 to find the correct driver.

The PCI ID (the crucial bit of information here) is the 8 digit string output from step #3.

Step 1:

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils

ndiswrapper is the program that allows us to use XP drivers under Linux.

Step 2:

lspci | grep 802.11 (note of the 8-10 digit number)

lspci is a utility for displaying information about all PCI buses in the system.

Step 3:

lspci -n | grep (append with 8-10 digits from step 2)

lspci -n shows the device codes (ie; PCI ID) that we need.

Step 4:

Find your PCI ID at the ndiswrapper wiki page

Step 5:

Unzip the driver file and save the .inf and .sys files. Take note of where you save these.

If you use file-roller (archive manager) to unpack your file it defaults to /tmp. You can unpack this file anywhere you like just as long as you remember where.

Step 6:

sudo ndiswrapper -i {driver.inf}

The -i used above installs the the windows driver.

Step 7:

sudo ndiswrapper -l

The -l lists the installed drivers. At this point we want to see hardware present, driver present. Anything else and we’ve either missed a step or installed an incompatible driver.

Step 8:

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

This command adds the ndiswrapper utility as a module in the kernel. This allows the kernel to communicate with the wireless card, etc.

Step 9:

sudo ndiswrapper -m

This adds ndiswrapper as a regular addition to the kernel (ie; it will now load automagically at boot!)

Step 10:

Setup your wireless access point, WEP/WPA, etc.

At this point, assuming everything went well, you should be just about done. Can’t hurt at this point to shutdown and restart (some cards have issues with soft reboot. shutdown is sometimes needed to re-load the card).

Assuming this works for you feel free to share this link with friends, relatives, dignitaries and people who may be inclined to give me money. If you have any questions just shoot me an email. We’ll see what we can do for you.