Can't Get USB Wireless Device to Enable...

[icanfly0307]

Hi,
I have a Netgear WG111T USB Wireless Adapter. It used to work fine in Fedora and Ubuntu. I've installed Ndiswrapper, installed the windows drivers and /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l shows that the driver is installed and the device is present. However, the light on the device shows that it is turned off! /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper doesn't do the trick either. Do I have to configure something else? Maybe in YaST? Thanks for your suggestions.

[lwfinger]

icanfly0307 wrote:
> Hi,
> I have a Netgear WG111T USB Wireless Adapter. It used to work fine
> in Fedora and Ubuntu. I've installed Ndiswrapper, installed the windows
> drivers and /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l shows that the driver is installed
> and the device is present. However, the light on the device shows that
> it is turned off! /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper doesn't do the trick
> either. Do I have to configure something else? Maybe in YaST? Thanks for
> your suggestions.

You should check the output of 'dmesg' for any messages related to
your wireless. It may also be that kernel 2.6.27 has a native driver
for that device. If so, it should be used in preference to
ndiswrapper. In any case, it would interfere with ndiswrapper.

What does the command 'lsusb' show?

Larry

[icanfly0307]

Thanks I'll do that. lsusb shows: Bus 001: Netgear WG111T Adapter (no firmware). Hope this helps to solve the problem.

[Prexy]

Originally Posted by icanfly0307

Thanks I'll do that. lsusb shows: Bus 001: Netgear WG111T Adapter (no firmware). Hope this helps to solve the problem.

Still waiting on an answer in another thread about this. Does (no firmware) mean you don't have it or you don't need it?

I have the same situation with a usb adapter that uses either ar5523 (this may be for Win 9x) or athmwdl (hope I remember those letters in the right order). Hmmmm.... the .inf file might be net5523..... Anyway, I read on a 4 year old post that one of these was the firmware and as soon as it loads it is replaced.

Also, one of these .inf files seems to be looking for something in \system32\drivers\. I tried editing that to where I placed the windows drivers for this device but that didn't work either

[deltaflyer44]

if it says "No firmware" it means you need to install the firmware to get it working,the rest is set up either via network manager or YaST

Andy

[Prexy]

Is there an explicit method for installing firmware? I used ndiswrapper to load these files but I don't know if that is all that I should do. After that, networkmanager and yast still could not get the adapter going. So, I guess there must be something else.

[lwfinger]

Prexy wrote:
> Is there an explicit method for installing firmware? I used ndiswrapper
> to load these files but I don't know if that is all that I should do.
> After that, networkmanager and yast still could not get the adapter
> going. So, I guess there must be something else.

Ndiswrapper has absolutely _NOTHING_ to do with loading firmware for
Linux drivers. The Windows drivers have the firmware embedded within
them and load it on the fly; however, Linux drivers don't do that -
mostly for legal reasons. They look for an appropriately named file in
/lib/firmware and load that when they start. The user has to obtain
the right firmware file and copy it to /lib/firmware. If the firmware
has an open license, then there is an openSUSE package that contains
the right file. If the firmware is not open, then other means are needed.

You can determine what file name is needed by inspecting the output of
the dmesg command.

Larry

[Prexy]

You posted the tip about dmesg elsewhere. When I looked at it, I saw nothing that gave me a hint as to what file I was looking for.

In the windows driver directory, this device has about 6 files: .inf, .bin and .sys files. I put them all into /lib/firmware and nothing happened.

I can't get anything wireless going in 11.1. I even bricked a motorola router trying to turn it into an access point!

[lwfinger]

Prexy wrote:
> You posted the tip about dmesg elsewhere. When I looked at it, I saw
> nothing that gave me a hint as to what file I was looking for.
>
> In the windows driver directory, this device has about 6 files: .inf,
> .bin and .sys files. I put them all into /lib/firmware and nothing
> happened.
>
> I can't get anything wireless going in 11.1. I even bricked a motorola
> router trying to turn it into an access point!

The .inf and .sys files are Windows drivers. They are totally useless
in /lib/firmware. I have no idea what the .bin file is.

If the dmesg output doesn't mention a missing firmware file, then your
device may not need firmware. One of mine does not.