WPC11 Version 4!

I would say maybe a different version. It's possible this is a new problem. CVS is updated often and maybe yours is newer than mine.


look at the version file in the folder where you downloaded it


[root@zeus ndiswrapper]# cat version
0.6+CVS



Note that the project, despite being very usable already, is still in
its early development stages. Support for Linux userspace tools, such
as monitoring tools, is very limited.

Before sending bug reports, please check archives of mailing list and
public forum available at project home page:
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net. Both these have search facility.
Follow the instructions below when sending a bug report:

* Enable DEBUG option the Makefile in driver directory and
recompile all sources. Report dmesg output. Without this step,
proper feedback may not be possible. Include details about your
card, chipset (reported by lspci), distribution, kernel version
in the post.

* Check if latest CVS works.

* Use an alternate windows driver; see the 'Supported Cards' page on
the project homepage for a driver that is known to work for your
chipset.

My version is 0.6+CVS as well.

I am in the process of updating to a 2.6 kernel so that i can get this to work. I got ndiswrapper to install right w/ my old kernel and it even "succesfully" installed the driver (XP) i got off the realtek site. KenTI since u have gotten success could u share what you did exactly. That would be great.

Ndiswrapper seems to be very good. I will try to get it working!

Sorry, I haven't been back in a while. I guess there is some interest in Ndiswrapper so I'll explain some of the gotchas that I had and how I got it to work.

First of all, I had the wrong *.INF and *.sys files when I first tried using Ndiswrapper so make sure you get the latest and greatest windows drivers from realtek. You should have two files that are named NET8180.INF and rtl8180.sys (later drivers might have different names, but that's what I have).

Second, read the readme. It's not the best doc, but it should do the job. If when you type "ndiswrapper -i" and you don't see something about a driver or whatever being "present" then you have a problem. That was what I was getting with the wrong drivers. Also, check dmesg. You should have a wlan0 entry there after doing the command.

Anyway, here's a little script that I wrote to get things up and running when I boot. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it does the job for me.

./ndiswrapper -i NET8180.INF
modprobe ndiswrapper
                                                                                                                                   
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 essid NETGEAR
iwconfig wlan0 channel 11
/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.10
/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.1 wlan0

P.S I was having a hard lockup on Kernel 2.6.5 on a slackware system that I'm almost sure were related to ndiswrapper because it was always epiphany up to something when it happens. I've recently switched over to Gentoo and a 2.6.3 kernel and have not had a problem...yet...but have only had the wireless up and running on it for a few hours as I write this.

I should have said read the INSTALL text not the README. Better yet, just read both

Getting Ndiswrapper to work is so much easier than the Realtek drivers! This is how I got my setup working (btw, i tried this on most of the knoppix derivitives, so it should work on debian too, with kernels ranging from 2.4.24 to 2.6.1):

Note: These are all console commands (for those VERY new to this!)

First you must download the newest version at
ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net

If you want to be on the edge, you can download the CVS by using:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ndiswrapper login

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ndiswrapper co ndiswrapper

Untar the ndiswrapper file and go to http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...x?Keyword=8180
and downloaded the latest WindowsXP drivers.

I unzipped the drivers into my ndiswrapper directory (/home/user_name/ndiswrapper/), and per the INSTALL text, I typed

make install

then

ndiswrapper -i NET8180.INF

to install the driver. Typing

ndiswrapper -l

will tell you if the driver is present, and for good measure I typed

dmesg | grep "wlan0"

and looked at the last line to see if it mentioned wlan0.

After all that I did

modprobe ndiswrapper

to install the module, then proceeded to setup my card using iwconfig:

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 key YOUR_KEY  //if you use a key use this!
iwconfig wlan0 essid YOUR_ESSID
iwconfig wlan0 channel YOUR_CHANNEL
/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.10  up  //an unused ip within your network!

/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.1 wlan0
OR
dhcpcd wlan0

The last ip number is the one to your router (thanks RoyBatty).

Try using

ping google.com

, and if it is successful, you are all set!

To save the "modprobe" settings, use:

ndiswrapper -m

Thanks to everyone on this thread once again!

Knoppix (and other knoppix-based distros, or those with netcardconfig):
You can omit the last three lines (only configure with iwconfig up to setting the essid) and run "netcardconfig", either from the knoppix menu under Network, where it is called "Network Card Configuration", and select "yes" in the "Use DHCP broadcast" window. Now you are all set!

Well, the hard lockup just happened again about 10 minutes ago. So it's locked up on me on a Slackware system running kernel 2.6.5 and a gentoo system running 2.6.3. I'm on a gentoo system right now. It always seems to happen when I'm running epiphany, so I'll try running straight Mozilla for a bit to see if anything is different(doubtful).

Anyway, I'll post this issue to the ndiswrapper forum and maybe put a couple printks in the module code to see If I can catch a null dereference or something before it dies.

Ndiswrapper, for obvious reasons, is not an ideal solution anyway. I think it was on another wireless thread that a guy said that he had been emailed by the driver maintainer at Realtek and had been informed that a 2.6.x version of the driver will be out in mid-April.

Good luck. I'll post any new info if there's any to be had.

I am using Mandrake 10.0, kernel 2.6.3.

I recently bought a Linksys WPC 11 Verson 4 wireless network card. I had great difficulty in installing this card under Linux. I could not return it to the shop because it worked under Windows XP.

Eventually I succeeded in making it work under Linux.

I used three software packages:

1) wireless-tools, from the Mandrake distribution.

2) the Windows XP RTL 8180L driver supplied by RealTek.

I visited the RealTek site "www.realtek.com.tw", clicked "DOWNLOADS", and searched for "8180".
I selected a mirror site for the Windows XP drived and downloaded the file "winxp-8180(168).zip". This file contains the driver "rtl8180.sys" and the "inf" file "RTL8180.INF ".

3) ndiswrapper version 0.7, from "ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net".

I followed the instructions in the ndiswrapper INSTALL file using the driver described above. Much to my relief, when I gave the command "ifup wlan0" I was connect to the Internet.

I had already found that ndiswrapper did NOT install any of the drivers on the CD supplied with the card. I also found that linuxant did not work with the rtl8180 driver or with any other driver that I tried.

I went through all the messages in this thread. Thanxs a lot guys!

I am trying to make WPC11 v4 linksys card (realtek chipset) work on Knoppix 3.3 (hard disk install). so far no success !!
This is what i tried.

STEP 1:

root@buddha:~# cardctl ident
Socket 0:
product info: "Realtek", "Rtl8139"
manfid: 0x0000, 0x024c
function: 6 (network)
Socket 1:
no product info available


STEP 2:

i downloaded the latest driver from realtek site and recompiled it.
after insmod the dmesg output is

******** RTL8180 Wireless Lan Driver 2003-11-24 loaded********
ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: 0x4583:0x8308 (ESS Allegro ES1988)
Linux agpgart interface v0.99 (c) Jeff Hartmann
agpgart: Maximum main memory to use for agp memory: 203M
agpgart: Detected Ali M1647 chipset
agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xf0000000
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 02:00.0 to 64
RTL8180: 02:00.0: region #0 IS a PIO resource!
RTL8180: request_region(0x00004000,0x00000100) !
NTFS driver v1.1.22 [Flags: R/W MODULE]
ttyS1: LSR safety check engaged!
ttyS1: LSR safety check engaged!
blk: queue c0334b60, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0820-0x08ff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0800-0x080f: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x378-0x37f 0x408-0x40f 0x480-0x48f 0x4d0-0x4d7
cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.


STEP 3:

I am using wlanup script came with the driver ..

wlanup file

#--------------------------
# Load wireless lan driver
#--------------------------
/sbin/insmod -f rtl8180_24x.o

# Config infrastructure mode
# Assign network type and desired SSID.
#------------------------------------------
/sbin/iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para networktype=infra
/sbin/iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para ssid= SSIDS
/sbin/iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para authtype=opensystem

#--------------------------
# Config WEP mode
#--------------------------
/sbin/iwpriv wlan0 wlan_para wepmode=off

#--------------------------
# Config debugging message
#--------------------------
/sbin/iwpriv wlan0 msglevel 2

#--------------------------
# Enable wireless lan driver
#--------------------------
/sbin/iwpriv wlan0 enable

#--------------------------
# Configure wlan0 IP address
#--------------------------
#/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.10
#echo "$(/sbin/ifconfig wlan0)"
#/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.1.1

STEP 4:

After executing the wlanup script the out put of /proc/rtl8180/status is:

root@buddha:~/rtl8180_1.5# cat /proc/rtl8180/status
---------------------------------------
Driver status
---------------------------------------

rtl8180_pci_driver version 1.5 loaded.
The Network is configured as Infrastructure mode.
MacAddr = 00:0c:41:40:67:5a
ioaddr = 0x4000
irq = 11


---------------------------------------
Wireless Link status
---------------------------------------

Link Fail!

Channel number = 11
beacon period = 100
BSSID = 0x00 0x0c 0x41 0x50 0x28 0x18
SSID =
Capability = 0x05
AID = 0x00
Operational rates = <1><2><5.5><11>Mbps
Current TX operational rates = <1>Mbps

STEP 5:

The output of /var/log/messages is

pr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:SwChnl Set PHY channel number = 11
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr bssdscr info:wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: BSSID = wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x0 wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0xc wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x41 wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x50 wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x28 wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x18 wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: SSID = wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x0(wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x0(wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x0(wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x0(wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr 0x0(wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: bdType = 0wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: beacon period = 100wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: Dtim period = 1wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: Capability = 0x5wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: Channel number = 11wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: Basic rate = 0x3wlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: supported rate = 0xfwlan0_MLME-show_BssDscr
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-wlan_deny_mac_filter_tbl_check deny wlan_mac_filter_tbl == NULL
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-wlan_sta_tbl_add Aid=1, station 00:0c:41:50:28:18 is added.
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-wlan_sta_tbl_add Aid=1, Orates=0xf, Brates=0xf, HighOrates=0x16, HighBrates=0x16
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-MlmeJoinRequest rtl8180_request_timer( &pMIB->Timer_SynchronizationTJoin..), Join Request time=0x158385, expires=200
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:rtl_request_timer request_timer at 0xcfa01728, timer_cnt=2
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:SwChnl Set PHY channel number = 11
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:rtl_delete_timer delete_timer at 0xcfa01728, timer_cnt=1
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-MlmeJoin_Confirm rtl_delete_timer( &(wCtx->pMIB.Timer_SynchronizationTJoin) );
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-MlmeJoin_Confirm Ready to send Authenticate request.<authAlg=open_system>
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-MlmeAuthenticateRequest rtl_request_timer( &pMIB->Timer_AuthReqService..), request auth_req timer. expires = 500
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:rtl_request_timer request_timer at 0xcfa00164, timer_cnt=2
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-OnAuthEven pMIB->State_AuthReqService == STATE_Wait_Auth_Seq_2(start)
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:rtl_delete_timer delete_timer at 0xcfa00164, timer_cnt=1
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-OnAuthEven rtl_delete_timer( &(wCtx->pMIB.Timer_AuthReqService) );
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-OnAuthEven pMIB->AuthReq_auAlg == open_system....
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-MlmeAuthenticateRequest_Confirm Ready to send associate request!
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-MlmeAssociateRequest rtl_request_timer( &pMIB->Timer_AssocReqService...), request Assoc_req timer
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:rtl_request_timer request_timer at 0xcfa0018c, timer_cnt=2
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-OnAsocRsp Received association response!
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:rtl_delete_timer delete_timer at 0xcfa0018c, timer_cnt=1
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-OnAsocRsp rtl_delete_timer( &(wCtx->pMIB.Timer_AssocReqService) );
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0_MLME-MlmeScanRequest rtl_request_timer( &pMIB->ScanEachChnlTimeoutHandle..) Scan Each Channel Time=0x158398, expires=5
Apr 30 20:58:23 buddha kernel: wlan0:rtl_request_timer request_timer at 0xcfa01744, timer_cnt=2

STEP 6:
The link light on the card blinks; the output of

root@buddha:~/rtl8180_1.5# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:41:40:67:5A
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:8 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:135095 (131.9 KiB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x4000

Need Help !!

Knoppix 3.3 (both the September and February editions) both have incompatible kernels (2.4.22 and 2.4.24, respectively). The first thing the Realtek driver needs is a kernel that is version 2.4.21 and below. You have to compile an older kernel. Go to debian.org and in the packages section, download the version 2.4.21 version of kernel-source. Google it or search linuxquestions.org for how to compile a kernel, but make sure you enable wireless networking (compiled-in not module) under the networking support menu.

Then, if you have all the directions down pat, setup the drivers, or go to this post for some extra help.

Another option is using the ndiswrapper drivers. Version 0.7 is out, and it has support for the Realtek8180 drivers. This post is how I got mine up. I would truly recommend using it because it is, first, a quicker install, and second, you can use newer kernels, like version 2.6.5 i'm using right now, with the drivers.

RoyBatty, in the Ndiswrapper it says:

"If ACPI is enabled in the kernel, but it is disabled by either "acpi=off" or "acpi=ht" boot option to the kernel, loadndisdriver may give oops (cursor stops blinking, no response to mouse or keyboard). This problem can be resolved by enabling ACPI; i.e., passing the command line boot option "acpi=on" to the kernel (or by simply omitting this boot option, as it defaults to "on")."

Try that out.

My buddy got it working with ndiswrapper as well, and it works great! Only problem, though, is that you cannot check the signal strength and the like, because the Windoze driver doesn't answer wireless-tools when it asks for the information. Any way to get around this without exchanging for the V3?

Try kwifimanager

Originally posted by coindood Getting Ndiswrapper to work is so much easier than the Realtek drivers! This is how I got my setup working (btw, i tried this on most of the knoppix derivitives, so it should work on debian too, with kernels ranging from 2.4.24 to 2.6.1):

Hello Coindood,

I just want to say that You have made me the happiest man in the world! I have followed the instructions for installing the ndiswrapper and everything just worked fine. You have done a better job than Realtek!

Thanks a Lot for this driver, i toked that i need to drop my card but now thanks to You everything is OK.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You ....... Thank You
Julius

ps: i use Fedora Core 2 test 3 with kernel-2.6.5-1.308
ooo i forgot: i have used Ndiswrapper from CVS and winxp-8180(168).zip