I’ve been using OpenSUSE 11.1 on my laptop (Compaq Armada E500, PIII 850mHz) for about a week and I’ve gotten everything I need up and running except the wireless adapter (linksys wpc54g v2, which uses the ACX111 chipset)
I’ve downloaded the Windows driver and installed ndiswrapper along with kndiswrapper 0.39 to give it a graphical front end. When I launch kndiswrapper, it says the ndiswrapper kernel isn’t loaded and prompts me to do so. I click okay and it instantly brings up a dialog informing me that it has failed to load.
What am I doing wrong? I’m running the GNOME desktop, but KDE applications seem to run fine on it.
Okay, I finally got brave and did the ndiswrapper thing from the terminal I followed the instructions at Ndiswrapper howto - openSUSE and it seemed to take. When I checked it by entering # ndiswrapper -l, I got the following:
lstinds : driver installed
device (104C:9066) present (alternate driver: acx)
I’m assuming that means it worked. There were two .inf files in the Windows driver folder I downloaded–lsbcmnds.inf and LSTINDS.INF–I figured I had a 50/50 chance of getting the right one, so I chose the one that was in all caps.
At this point, YaST’s Network Configuration recognizes the presence of the wireless card, but it gives me this error message:
ACX 111 54Mbps Wireless Interface (Not connected)
BusID : 0000:06:00.0
Unable to configure the network card because the kernel device (eth0, wlan0) is not present. This is mostly caused by missing firmware (for wlan devices). See dmesg output for details.
What should I do about this? Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
You need the firmware installed to get it working.Look here Index of /fw/acx111_1.2.1.34/ & see which one works for you.Just download & copy to /lib/firmware
Andy
Okay, I think I’m getting closer to a solution, but at the same time, I feel like I’m hampered by my own total cluelessness.
So I downloaded all five of the files in the directory at Index of /fw/acx111_1.2.1.34/ but I have no idea whether I need to try them one at the time or install all of them or a subset. There was one file that had a newer date than the others so I tried it first. Once I installed, it and restarted the computer, the “power” LED lit up for the first time. Definitely a good sign, but not out of the woods yet.
When I go to YaST Control Center and launch Network Settings, it starts the ‘Initializing Network Configuration’ routine and when it gets to ‘Detect Network Devices,’ I still get a message that says “There is ndiswrapper configuration detected but the Kernel module was not modprobed. Do you want to modprobe ndiswrapper?” I click ‘Yes’ and get this message: “Error: ndiswrapper kernel module wasn’t loaded. Check configuration manually.” I click ‘Ok’ and to on into the Network Settings.
The wireless card is shown but the IP address shows “Not configured”. There’s a prompt at the bottom of the window that says to press Edit to configure the card. I do so and get another dialog box prompting me to install firmware or click “continue” if I have already done so. I click “continue” and I get to the “Wireless Device Settings”. I click the “scan network” button and it finds my wireless router’s ESSID. I enter the numeric passcode, click “Next” and I’m back to the overview tab and the wireless device is shown at the bottom of the window with the notation (not connected). I click Ok and it goes through the “Saving Network Configuration” routine.
When this finishes, the ‘Link’ LED on the wireless card and the “Wireless” LED on my router are happily blinking, indicating that they’re talking to each other.
At this point, I launch Firefox and…
Nothing.
Am I on the right track? Am I doing something wrong? I feel like I’m getting closer, but I’m just not getting there.
You should uninstall the setting for ndiswrapper & unload the ndiswrapper driver you installed, it is probably conflicting with the newer one you installed
Andy
I’m not sure I understand. I’ve only installed one driver using ndiswrapper (LSTINDS.INF) and one firmware file (tiacx111c16). What is conflicting with what? Are these two conflicting with each other? Do I need to remove one and leave the other installed?
yes, uninstall the ndiswrapper driver & it should sort it out
Andy
Okay, I uninstalled the ndiswrapper driver (kndiswrapper handled that with just a couple of clicks), so the only thing resembling driver software for the card is the “tiacx111c16” firmware file.
I went into Network Settings under YaST, deleted the wireless network configuration I had set up, and re-entered the configuration. The connection does include a WEP passcode. It’s worth noting that upon launching, Network Settings did not give me the prompt to modprobe the ndiswrapper kernel module.
After a restart, the wireless card is active and seems to have established tentative contact with the router. I say “tentative” because while the “Link” light is flashing on the wireless card and the “wireless” light is lit on the router, there’s not an actual network connection. Network Tools shows the wireless card is transmitting data, but is not receiving anything back from the router. Attempts to ‘ping’ the wireless router’s IP address are unsuccessful.
I’m not sure where to go from here, but I feel like I’m progressing with baby steps, which are better than no steps at all.
Btw, I greatly appreciate your continued help.
things to check:
1 ) firewall isn’t stopping device ( temporarily disable firewall to check )
2 ) device is set to external with the firewall
3 ) if using wep encryption, make sure you are using hexadecimal as there are a few problems with passphrase ( see Google )
4 ) no errors in the encryption
5 ) router is not using MAC filtering as well
6 ) check /var/log/messages to see if there are any problems connecting
Andy
Changing from “passphrase” to “hexadecimal” did the trick! I’m posting this wirelessly from my openSUSE laptop!
Thank you very much for your patience and guidance.
Excellent, glad you got it working.Now Enjoy 
Andy