Do I still need ndiswrapper in Dapper?

[chaumurky]

In Breezy I needed ndiswrapper for my Netgear WG311v3 wireless card but in Dapper it appears to be recognised although it doesn't show in my network settings. Also ndiswrapper won't load properly anymore. Do I just need to modprobe a driver now? Is it already loaded and if so, is it correct? If not where do I find out which one?

lspci:
0000:00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)

lsmod:
mrv8k 36632 0
ieee80211 35144 1 mrv8k
ieee80211_crypt 6272 1 ieee80211

Thanks for your time.

[chaumurky]

sorry I should have done lspci -v:

0000:00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)
Subsystem: Netgear: Unknown device 6b00
Flags: 66MHz, medium devsel, IRQ 201
Memory at d5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Memory at d4800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: <available only to root>

[chaumurky]

Also this from dmesg:

[4294685.269000] mrv8k: Firmware 'mrv8k-b.fw' not available or load failed.
[4294685.269000] mrv8k: mrv8k_init_one: return -2
[4294685.269000] mrv8k: Command SET_RADIO. len=12 state=off preamble=auto
[4294685.269000] mrv8k: queue command (5d121400)
[4294685.269000] mrv8k: kickoff command (5d121400)
[4294685.661000] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[4294685.661000] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
[4294685.661000] IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
[4294686.276000] ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:00:08.0 disabled
[4294686.276000] mrv8k: mrv8k_init_one: return -2
[4294686.276000] mrv8k: probe of 0000:00:08.0 failed with error -2
[4294686.973000] lp: driver loaded but no devices found


Should I blacklist this driver? How is this done in dapper? I see no /etc/hotplug/blacklist.

[chaumurky]

Actually it's /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. I put mrv8k there and rebooted. Now ndiswrapper worked. Hope this helps other WG311v3 owners running Dapper...

[pirate_yarrr]

The problem is, you have to install the firmware yourself using the Windows drivers, but there is NO documentation on this. Even the readme file included with the mrv8k drivers is incomplete...the file just ends halfway through.
From the readme:
Marvell Libertas Wifi driver
============================

Requirement:
-----------

1) a recent Linux kernel (2.6.15+)
http://kernel.org/

2) SoftMAC IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack extension
http://softmac.sipsolutions.net/

3) Firmware Files
Firmware can be extract from the windows driver.




How to extract the firmware from the windows driver
---------------------------------------------------

1) Firmware is found in this files:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASUS WL-138G MRV8KA51.sys http://www.asus.com.tw/
version 2.3.0.19 (05/20/2004)
from the STA directory
This is the firmware used by the develloper
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PLANET WL-3563 MRV8K51.sys
version 2.3.0.3 (01/19/2004)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NETGEAR WG311v3 WG311v3XP.sys
version 3.1.1.7 (02/22/2005)

2) Use the program :

The drivers, as well as the firmware extractor, can be found here:
http://www.saillard.org/linux/mrv8k/files/

If anyone has more luck than me, and is able to get this working, please post here or send me a PM. It would be nice to have cards such as wg311v3 working "out of the box" in Dapper.

[oehmes]

it is very simple ,

download a Windows driver that fits the chipset (e.g. TEW-421) download the firmware extract tool --> http://www.saillard.org/linux/mrv8k/files/mrv8k_extract_fw.c
the compile it with gcc mrv8k_extract_fw.c -o mrv8k-firmware-extract
now run mrv8k-firmware-extract Drivers/Windows\ 2000/Mrv8000c.sys
now it extracts the firmware files ..

[lazyfun]

.......................Actually it's /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. I put mrv8k there and rebooted. Now ndiswrapper worked. Hope this helps other WG311v3 owners running Dapper.......................

Did it ever help! Thankyou thankyou. I've been trying to get this to work for ages

[hajk]

The same thing goes for the NetGear WG111v2 USB dongle -- it is recognized in Dapper as having a RealTek 8187 chipset, the r8187 driver is loaded, syslog shows that the device is initialized... except the light never comes on. Oh well, the driver is *experimental*, that explains it.

So back to ndiswrapper (after blacklisting r8187); I get good results with the net111v2 driver version on the Netgear CD for Windows98.