Anyone using WLI2-USB2-G54 with ndiswrapper in Mandrake 10.1

[longbowdev 0]

Has anyone been able to make Buffalo Tech WLI2-USB2-G54 USB wireless card work in Mandrake Linux 10.1?

 

I know how to use the ndiswrapper because I have another wireless card. It is a DLink DWL-650+ pcmicia wireless card and I was able to make it work.

 

I have been researching the web and tried various suggestion but I still get the message "hardware not present" when I type the ndiswrapper -l command.

 

I don't know if I need to configure anything related with the USB port.

 

If you have done this setup, can you provide me a step by step guide so I could make my Buffalo card work.

 

Thanks,

Longbowdev

 

 

[danleff 0]

Pcmcia and usb are two different animals. The Buffalo card has a prism chipset, or at least it should.

 

Did you follow the advice on the ndiswrapper card wiki page?

 

Also, did you install the Win XP driver using the ndiswrapper -i command? One user reports that the driver for Linksys WUSB54G works fine.

[martouf 0]

Yes, the referenced Buffalo USB uses the Broadcom 54g chipset.

 

As best I recall, the necessary WinXP inf file adds a windriver named 'netu2g54'.

 

it may help the troubleshooting if you could cut-n-paste the ndiswrapper entries

from the file /var/log/messages or the command dmesg ..

 

assuming you've installed the necessary WinXP driver using the ndiswrapper tool

("ndiswrapper -i nameofthewindriver.inf"\) and the driver is listed using the tool

("ndiswrapper -l"\):

 

if there's a log entry about disabling an interrupt after you've loaded

the ndiswrapper module, then you may need to modify your 2.6 kernel boot

parameters by adding "acpi=noirq".

[choisumpapa 0]

I have a similar wireless client, Buffalo Wireless USB Keychain Adapter. The client works seamlessly in WinXP. However, I don't know how to make it work in Linux.

 

Since I am new to the OS and have not much idea what to do. I've tried the instruction in Linuxant and installed the DriverLoader. However, I just got no device was found and later I found out that the client was identified as an unknown scanner.

 

Could anyone please tell me what to do next. The Linux version I used is also Mandrake 10.1 and the kernel is 2.6.3-7mdk.

 

Furthermore, what is ndiswrapper? is it same as the "DriverLoader" that I've installed?

[danleff 0]

Do you happen to know what chipset this is? I can only take a guess. The inf file seems to be RT, which could be Ralink or realtek. They do not give much information on the Buffalo site.

 

The Linuxant driver manager is another project different from ndiswrapper. Linuxant costs some cash in the end, where ndiswrapper is open source. Both require the use of drivers already built for Windows systems.

 

I'm curious, did the drivers that you used (I assume you used ther ones that came with the card) set up properly in the linuxant manager window when you pointed your browser to http://127.0.0.1:18020?

[choisumpapa 0]

I think the chipset is RT2500USB from Ralink, I forgot where did I read the info.

 

The drivers I used are indeed came with the card and when I point to the :18020, it asks me to supply the two drivers from the CD, one is the rt2500usb.sys and the other rt25u98.sys. However, then it just said no device found.

 

What should I do? does it matter that the client was recognised as scanner instead of a network device? Since I am really new to Linux, I really don't know what exactly is going on behind the scene.

 

 

 

[danleff 0]

Is this the WLI-U2-KG54-AI model?

 

It looks like you are trying to install the Windows 98 drivers using DriverLoader. This will not work. You should try the Win 2000 drivers, which should be the NETU2G54.INF and RT2500USB.sys files.

 

If I remember correctly, Linuxant does not support Ralink drivers. You may need to try ndiswrapper. Let us know what happens.

 

 

[choisumpapa 0]

well yes, but without the AI.

 

Regarding the driver, I also feel little bit strange but it is DriverLoader's instruction. It requires both drivers as well. Anyway, it didnt work.

 

I would like to try the ndiswrapper, but.... how ? You know I really a newbie ..... :-)

[danleff 0]

I looked around. It appears that support is not good for this device at all. The ndiswrapper wiki does not show any users having success with this device. Using ndiswrapper is not easy configuring such devices, so I wonder if it would work.

 

The Linuxant package and ndiswrapper need the kernel source package installed, which is not the default in Mandrake. Is the kernel source package installed? Did you get any errors in installing the linuxant package, say related to not finding the kernel source?

 

The other little note that I found on the ndiswrapper wiki is that the native Buffalo drivers did not work properly with ndiswrapper and his usb device. The user used a linksys driver for his usb card that worked, but his was not a usb NIC stick. The chances look bleak for this device.

 

Believe me, I don't mean to be negative, but ndiswrapper is not easy to configure. See my experiences with ndiswrapper and my PCI cards in my article here.

 

Yes, this looks like a Ralink chipset, but I suspect that the confusion regarding needing multiple driver file is related to the need to use both the native driver and usb support drivers. This may be the source of the problem here. Ralink is fairly new and usb adds to the complexity of the problem.

 

Frankly, I think Linux has not caught up with support for devices like this yet. Remember, this device was designed for a Windows environment. An e-mail to Buffalo Wireless, to the effect that you would like support for Linux, may help.

 

Did you post an e-mail to Linuxant to ask about the compatability of this device with their package?

 

Maybe someone has experienced success with this and the activity of this thread might spark a response to the positive.

[choisumpapa 0]

At last I've tried the ndiswrapper. Everything appears fine up to point after

 

modprobe ndiswrapper

 

The wlan0 never appears :-( .

 

lsmod just show ndiswrapper but 0 used.

 

The driver that I used was from Ralink. If I tried the original driver from Buffalo, just hang.

 

By the way, what are the PID and VID, shown in the inf file refers to?

 

Any idea what else can I do?

[martouf 0]

what does [size:4][tt],, /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l ,,[/tt][/color] show?

 

what does [size:4][tt],, grep ndis /var/log/messages ,,[/tt][/color] show?

 

[choisumpapa 0]

for ndiswrpapper -l

rt2500usb driver present, hardware present

 

for grep , below is the thingy that I got, sorry for the length of it.

 

May 11 22:34:38 localhost kernel: ndiswrapper version 1.1 loaded (preempt=no,smp=no)

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: Modules linked in: ndiswrapper nls_cp950 isofs vfat fat ircomm-tty ircomm irda crc-ccitt sg st sr_mod sd_mod scsi_mod nfsd exportfs lockd sunrpc lp parport_pc ppdev parport usblp md5 ipv6 snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-via82xx snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm snd-timer snd-page-alloc gameport snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd soundcore af_packet usbhid floppy ds yenta_socket pcmcia_core 8139too mii raw ide-cd cdrom loop supermount via-agp agpgart uhci-hcd usbcore rtc ext3 jbd

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: EIP is at check_nt_hdr+0xb/0x140 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: Process loadndisdriver (pid: 8869, threadinfo=c0842000 task=c046d380)

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: [pg0+203077859/1069604864] load_pe_images+0x43/0x1a0 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: [<cc59b8e3>] load_pe_images+0x43/0x1a0 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: [pg0+203036621/1069604864] load_sys_files+0xfd/0x200 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: [<cc5917cd>] load_sys_files+0xfd/0x200 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: [pg0+203038804/1069604864] load_ndis_driver+0x54/0x100 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: [<cc592054>] load_ndis_driver+0x54/0x100 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: [pg0+203040648/1069604864] wrapper_ioctl+0x78/0xe0 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: [<cc592788>] wrapper_ioctl+0x78/0xe0 [ndiswrapper]

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: <3>ndiswrapper (ndiswrapper_load_driver:92): loadndiswrapper failed (11); check system log for messages from 'loadndisdriver'

May 11 22:34:39 localhost kernel: usbcore: registered new driver ndiswrapper

[root@localhost matthew]# iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

 

eth0 no wireless extensions.

 

sit0 no wireless extensions.

 

 

Any idea? please help

 

[martouf 0]

it looks like you've got everything installed properly, but for some reason

the ndiswrapper kernel module is throwing errors. and perhaps just plain

crapping out on you.

 

is there a newer ndiswrapper available for your distro or are you ready

to build a newer ndiswrapper kernel module yourself?

 

ps: what you posted isn't all that long.. you were right to put it all in.

I couldn't have been able to figure out what is going on otherwise.

 

[danleff 0]

I agree martouf. He needs to try the latest version from source or CVS. I had to try the CVS version before I got my Ralink card to work. The other wrinkle is that this is USB.

 

You all can see my trials and errors with the ralink driver here and specifically with ndiswrapper here.

[choisumpapa 0]

Finally, I got my buffalo client recognised. Thank you for your great help.

 

I give up the ndiswrapper because it cannot recognised the buffalo, I suspect it's because the PID and VID are different if I use other manufacturer's driver, even the the driver from ralink does not contain the PID and VID which the buffalo used. If I tried to change the inf file and use the specific PID and VID that buffalo used, it just crash.

 

So,I downloaded the linspire rt2570 driver and have it compiled. The OS now can recognised the buffalo as "rausb0". However I still have problems in setting it up since I used to have it recognised by the AOSS in window environment. Can you give me some help from here?

 

 

 

[choisumpapa 0]

At last, I am writing this message with the buffalo connected to internet. I think it's time to thank Danleff and martouf. You've really give me a lot of help throughout the process and I've learn quite a lot. Thank you.

 

When I look back, it nearly took me a month to figure out how to make the client work. It seems that it's a waste of time at first because in the old XP environment, you just plug it in and then press a few buttons, everything should work as it supposed to be. However, in Linux, you have to look for the driver, compile it, test it and then set the thing with the primitive editor 'vi'. But I think it's part of the fun of exploring a new OS.

 

Danleff, you are right at the very beginning, for a beginner to make this little supported usb driver to work was a nightmare and not an easy task. I am glad that I got through at last and I think I could continue my exploration with the LINUX box. Thank you.

 

BTW, I think I've read something about the linspire driver was not really in the public domain and should not be distributed. What does that actually mean?

 

 

[iamroot 0]

That probably means the linspire driver is not released under a Free Software or Open-Source license and is thus proprietary software.

[danleff 0]

Linspire based driver, eh? I'm not surprised. I have been a Linspire member since the beginning. Their distro recognized my atheros based wireless chip on my secondary box out of the box.

 

Nice going on finding a solution. Good luck with your system!

[choisumpapa 0]

just check RAlink website, it appears that they have a usb driver at last. I think this maybe good news for those who use the RA2500 usb dongle. I think I might try to find some time to test whether it works with mine.