HOWTO: Get your Belkin Pre-N (Airgo chip) wireless card working with Dapper

[Danni]

This has been tested with Kubuntu Dapper Drake and a Belkin Pre-N card (F5D8010uk). It probably will work with the other cards that use the same chipset, but I have no way of checking. This is my first how to, so feel free to correct me

OK. For this card you need to use ndiswrapper, but the version that comes with dapper doesn't work properly. It gets as far as finding the access point, then doesn't let you get an IP address using DHCP or connect with a static address.

What you need is newest version of ndiswrapper. The version I used is 1.23, and it is available to download at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

I'm now going to shamelessly copy the instructions on what to do from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...er/Ndiswrapper, as that is what got mine working.

For this, I'm assuming you can have some internet access while you get your wireless working, probably with a cable. If not, I'll try and figure out how you can get them from another computer at some later date, but you will need some internet access for this to work.

First of all we need to install some kernel headers. Why I'm not sure, but when I didn't do it nothing else worked.

From terminal, konsole or whatever you use, type this:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

You also need to install ndiswrapper's dependencies, and the stuff to make it compile. Again in the terminal, run:

sudo apt-get install dh-make fakeroot gcc-3.4 build-essential

Right then, now that's done it's time to download ndiswrapper. Download it here, then in the terminal change your directory to where it is (using the cd command if necessary).

Next, run these commands (you can press tab after the first few letters of the filename instead of typing it all out):

tar xvfz ndiswrapper-[current version].tar.gz
cd ndiswrapper-[current version]

Replace [current version] with the version you're using (such as ndiswrapper-1.23) or just press tab after typing a few letters.

Next up we get to do some compiling! Don't worry, this isn't hard as we installed all the dependancies earlier on. In your terminal again, run:

sudo make uninstall

If you get an error with this about not being able to remove it because it's a directory, run this:

rm -r path/to/the/directory/it/can't/remove

Make sure it's only the directory it was complaining about though- you don't want to be removing something you shouldn't. Then run the sudo make uninstall again.

Once you get no errors with the make uninstall, run this:

sudo make

Then run this (I don't know why you run fakeroot, but it works so I'm not arguing):

fakeroot
sudo make install

Hopefully you shouldn't get any errors. If you do try running the commands again.

Once that's all sorted, it's time to install your driver. You need the one from here.

Unzip the drivers, and note where they're installed. In terminal change to that directory (mine was
/home/username/wpnt511_v1104/Utility/Driver but yours could be different) and then run:

sudo ndiswrapper -i NETANI.INF

That should install the driver. Next we check that everything there has worked ok:

ndiswrapper -l

With luck it should show:

Installed drivers:
netani          driver installed, hardware present

Next up we have to load the ndiswrapper module.

sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

We now check for error messages.

tail /var/log/messages

No errors? Great! It should now work properly. Just to be sure, check that ifconfig and iwconfig show your wireless card. If they don't, try a restart (mine didn't show till after I'd restarted and modprobe ndiswrapper again).

With luck you should now be able to connect to your network. The quickest way (for me) was to run these commands:

sudo ifconfig wlan0
sudo iwlist scan
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid [mynetworkessid]
sudo dhclient wlan0

If you have security set up on your network, you will have to set that up as well, but that's covered elsewhere.

Hopefully you now have a working wireless card! If I've made any mistakes/missed anything out/it's not clear don't hesitate to yell at me. Any suggestions are also appreciated. If you need help you can always ask, but I'm still quite new to linux so may not know the answers.

Hope this helps,

Danni

[T-AA]

thx very much worked like a charm

[wyth]

Great googly-moogly! I've had one of these cards for over a year, and couldn't get it to work on a Linux machine, and won't connect to the secure network at my university.

But this guide, man, it worked in seconds. I'm so impressed; a nice, fast card working perfectly with Edgy. I'm a happy user.

[x-tomek]

Thanks very much, worked for me as well (Netgear WPNT511). This is the first and only how-to I've come across so far for configuring Airgo (TrueMIMO 3 gen) based cards.

You might want to consider adding that ndiswrapper should be added to /etc/modules so the kernel module is loaded at boot time.

Another area is /etc/network/interfaces - likely will have to be edited, particularly if wpa_supplicant is used. I'm new to desktop Linux and Ubuntu - just about to try to configure WPA2 (http://joncellini.com/blog/archives/...g-v3-broadcom/ is good but outdated)

What encryption do you use with Belkin, and did you manage to configure it?

[saracen]

I have a Belkin Pre-N Wireless PCMCIA card (model # F5D8010) that I can't get to work on Edgy or on Feisty. I've followed the steps in this tutorial but instead of downloading and compiling the ndiswrapper source I've installed the ones in the Feisty repositories (version 1.38 ). I downloaded the driver and installed it successfully using the "ndiswrapper -i" command. Now when I do "ndiswrapper -l" this is what I get:

saracen@acer:/etc$ ndiswrapper -l
netani : driver installed
        device (17CB:0001) present

Then I run depmod and that works fine, but when I go to load the module it complains:

saracen@acer:/etc$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/kernel/drivers/net/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko): Invalid argument

Does anyone know what the problem is here?

[wyth]

Hi Saracen,

I recently upgraded to Feisty and had some networking issues, so I did the same as you -- installed the repository ndiswrapper. And I'm having the same issue -- fatal error inserting ndiswrapper when I modprobe it. Did you get a fix on this?

[wyth]

Okay, here's how to get the standard Feisty ndiswrapper working:

First, if you used the above method to install ndiswrapper from sourceforge, you may want to remove everything, just to be safe. See the instructions here.

Second, at the command line, do the following:

sudo aptitude install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

Grab the drivers if you don't have them. Then install:

sudo ndiswrapper -i NETANI.INF

Check to see if it installed:

ndiswrapper -l

You should see something like:

netani : driver installed
        device (17CB:0001) present

Load up the module:

sudo depmod -a

NOW: To get modprobe to work, need to use module-assistant:

sudo module-assistant prepare
sudo module-assistant auto-install ndiswrapper
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

Make sure you have ndiswrapper in /etc/modules

Reboot and enjoy your wireless.


Note: I tried the latest version on sourceforge, to no avail. That was 1.41. The Feisty one is 1.38, which works perfectly well. In fact, it seems to be working better on Feisty than it did on Edgy (when I compiled it).

[Pedda]

I tried your guide and it worked, once.

I connected the computer to the wireless network at school and it worked. I turned the computer off and went home.

When I restarted my laptop at home the pc-card is dead. No lights are flashing. Networkmanager just shows a wired connection, no option with wireless.

According to

ndiswrapper -l

my card is there, but not according to anything else in the computer. What do I do now?

netani : driver installed
        device (17CB:0001) present

[wyth]

Which guide did you try, Danni's or mine? (I submitted a new guide as a HOWTO, but it seemed to disappear as soon as I submitted it.)

If you used mine, try this: Right-click on network manager and disable networking, then remove the card. Put the card back in, right-click on network manager and enable networking, and see if that helps.

I have WPA on my home network and have this happen sometimes. Stopping everything and re-firing up the networking seems to help (at last for me).

[wyth]

A full Belkin Pre-N Feisty guide is now available here.