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

[wyth]

First the details: This works on 32-bit machines, and is for getting your Belkin Pre-N card to work with ndiswrapper. The Pre-N cards (and possibly others in the N line) aren't being picked up automatically. They can work with the current ndiswrapper that's available in the repositories.

Thanks to Danni, who first showed how to get your Belkin Pre-N working on Dapper.

I won't be supporting this actively, but will check in on occasion. It should work; I have some middle-aged hardware, and it's working for me without a hitch. I do suggest using "aptitude install" as opposed to apt-get or synaptic, just to keep things tidy.

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

First, if you have a previous version, remove it. If you used aptitude, no problem. if you compiled ndiswrapper from sourceforge, you may want to remove everything, just to be safe. See the instructions here. If you installed via apt-get or synaptic, the previous instructions will show you where to check for leftover files.

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).

[TwoBit]

I don't understand your "Grab the drivers if you don't have them" link. The link takes you to a page for a Netgear wireless adapter but the page has nothing to do with drivers.

[TwoBit]

Also, this command:

sudo module-assistant auto-install ndiswrapper

results in trying to compile something and gives the following error:

dh_clean: cannot read debian/control: No such file or directory

and after that I can't tell if the command aborted or what, as I was merely returned to the command prompt.

[wyth]

TwoBit: To get the card to work, you need the right drivers. The Belkin Pre-N drivers won't work with ndiswrapper. But the Netgear drivers do work. So you need to download those drivers and unzip them. The NETANI.INF file is what you want; I believe it's in the Utility/Drivers folder.

I'm not sure about the dh_clean problem; here's a few things to try:

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

and/or, check

tail /var/log/messages

for any errors.

This guide was built off an original one for Dapper that required compiling ndiswrapper from source. The current ndiswrapper in the Feisty repositories is up to date and works.

[jnorris235]

(Note: I put this on the wrong thread so am reposting here!)
I spent so many hours trying to get ndiswrapper to work that I just gave up with Dapper.
Thinking Feisty might be better I tried again.

Thank you (and I DO mean that!) to this guy for taking the time to try to help.
But...
Yet again - failure.

I went to get that package as he suggested. Unzipped it.
In console drilled to the Driver folder and typed
sudo ndiswrapper -i netani.inf
and I get
driver netani already installed

Then
ndiswrapper -l
and I get
invalid driver

I was doing this online of course but then wondered if you had to have the actual hardware in place before installing the drivers.
So went off line, switched the network card to the Belkin and back to Terminal - same results.

I.m trying to use a Belkin Wireless Pre-N Notebook Network Card in the little frame that holds it, in my Desktop. Part FSD8010
Windows used to note that there was a faulty hardware device and you could Add Drivers. I haven't found a similar place in Ubuntu....if you dont mind me talking dirty for a minute!

Any ideas - desperately need the preN to drive through stone walls!

[wyth]

I responded on the other thread.

[jcbwalsh]

Whenever I run the step "sudo modprobe ndiswrapper" the machine locks up and has to be hard rebooted. Any suggestions?

[wyth]

Try re-installing module-assistant and module-init-tools. I'm not sure why it would lock your system, but if it's a problem with modprobe, maybe one or both of those packages are broken.

[justinmiller87]

I don't understand your "Grab the drivers if you don't have them" link. The link takes you to a page for a Netgear wireless adapter but the page has nothing to do with drivers.

Try this link:

http://kbserver.netgear.com/products/WPN511.asp

[wesb]

n/m