Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

[tmulcahy]

Hi pytheas22,

I've read through every page of this thread and can't see a similar problem to what I'm having.

I'm running Hardy 8.04 on a Dell Dimension 5150 with a Netgear wg111t USB wifi adaptor. I'm using ndiswrapper and it does work very well and achieves good speeds (400KB/s on my internet connection), however If I place any load on it, such as trying to download a 600MB file the connection will break before the download is complete (99.99% of the friggin time!).

The only way to get the connection back is to shutdown the computer and start it again. If I try a 'restart' rather than a shutdown, the connection will not come back up.

Would an upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 help?

I see that the wg111 is listed on this site, would that help sort out the problem? Clutching at straws here!
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Devices/USB

Any help appreciated so I can save myself rebooting every 5minutes.

[pytheas22]

tmulcahy: you may well have better luck in 8.10. You could at least burn a live CD and try it there.

You may also have better luck if you try using a different Windows driver with ndiswrapper, or if you compile ndiswrapper from source--although neither of these options is a guaranteed solution.

Also, the site that you linked to says that the WG111 has a prism (p54) chipset, which should have native support built into the Linux kernel (I have a p54 device and it works out-of-the-box in 8.04), meaning that ndiswrapper is not necessary. Was your card not auto-detected by Ubuntu?

If you could please post the output of the following commands with your card plugged into the computer, I'll see if I can find some instructions that would help you:

lsusb
lshw -C Network

Finally, when your connection breaks, try running these commands; they may bring the connection back up without requiring you to restart the machine:

sudo modprobe -r ndiswrapper
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

[tmulcahy]

Thanks for your quick reply!

I couldn't get the adaptor to work without ndiswrapper out of the box. I will try with 8.10, of course downloading such a large file will break my connection so at least I will get a chance to test your other suggestion for re-enabling my adaptor without a restart

tmulcahy@tmulcahy-desktop:~$ lsusb
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 1385:4251 Netgear, Inc 
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000  
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 045e:00f9 Microsoft Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

tmulcahy@tmulcahy-desktop:~$ lshw -C Network
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
  *-network               
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: 82801G (ICH7 Family) LAN Controller
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 8
       bus info: pci@0000:03:08.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 01
       serial: 00:13:72:c6:ca:1e
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=e100 driverversion=3.5.23-k4-NAPI firmware=N/A latency=64 maxlatency=56 mingnt=8 module=e100 multicast=yes
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 1
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 00:0f:b5:94:62:83
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ndiswrapper+netwg11t driverversion=1.52+NETGEAR,09/05/2005,1.5.0.21 ip=192.168.1.2 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g

Ran this again with 'sudo' as I received a warning the first time.

tmulcahy@tmulcahy-desktop:~$ sudo lshw -C Network
[sudo] password for tmulcahy: 
  *-network               
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: 82801G (ICH7 Family) LAN Controller
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 8
       bus info: pci@0000:03:08.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 01
       serial: 00:13:72:c6:ca:1e
       size: 10MB/s
       capacity: 100MB/s
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e100 driverversion=3.5.23-k4-NAPI duplex=half firmware=N/A latency=64 link=no maxlatency=56 mingnt=8 module=e100 multicast=yes port=MII speed=10MB/s
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 1
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 00:0f:b5:94:62:83
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ndiswrapper+netwg11t driverversion=1.52+NETGEAR,09/05/2005,1.5.0.21 ip=192.168.1.2 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g

Thanks for your help!

[pytheas22]

tmulcahy: thanks for the information. I think that your card has an Atheros chipset, not Prism. It doesn't seem to be listed at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Devices/USB --there's an entry for a Netgear WG111 but it must be a different version, as your PCI ID (1385:4251) does not match the one given. This happens frequently because hardware vendors like to change the chipsets in their cards but continue to sell them under the exact same names.

In any case, this all means that ndiswrapper is indeed probably the only way to get your card working, as there are no native drivers for Atheros-based USB devices as far as I know.

I googled around but unfortunately couldn't find anyone else having problems with this card under ndiswrapper. There seem to have been some issues a couple of years ago with this card causing Ubuntu (the whole system, not just networking) to crash and lock up, but they were supposed to have been resolved a while ago, so I doubt that they relate to your problem.

I think that the best thing to do is to try the suggestions in my last post. If they don't help, then the next time that your card crashes, please immediately open a terminal, run the following command and post the output here. Hopefully it will provide a clue as to why exactly the card is crashing:

dmesg | tail

[tmulcahy]

Hi pytheas22, (do you have a name other than the username! Kinda odd using it).
I'm Tom by the way,
anyhow..

I ran the "dmesg | tail" command directly after the connection broke, here is the output

tmulcahy@tmulcahy-desktop:~$ dmesg | tail
[   48.178180] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[   48.231838] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:02.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[   48.231851] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:02.0 to 64
[   48.231922] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20060119 on minor 0
[  846.084343] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[  846.084857] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
[  846.085942] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
[  854.585760] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[  856.501382] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
[  871.311520] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
tmulcahy@tmulcahy-desktop:~$

Also,
Last night I tried the other commands you suggested.

sudo modprobe -r ndiswrapper
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

However the command did not complete after a reasonable time so I used ctrl-c to stop it. There was no output.


I also tried the following command that you mentioned in an earlier post,
and received the following message.

tmulcahy@tmulcahy-desktop:~$ sudo rmmod ndiswrapper
ERROR: Removing 'ndiswrapper': Device or resource busy

[tmulcahy]

Also, to be thorough I ran the "dmesg | tail" again just now when the connection was working correctly and received the following output.

The order of the last three lines is different, and the number at the start of each line differs. Otherwise it looks the same.

tmulcahy@tmulcahy-desktop:~$ dmesg | tail
[  151.422939] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[  151.451983] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:02.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[  151.451995] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:02.0 to 64
[  151.452063] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20060119 on minor 0
[  178.302233] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[  178.302916] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
[  178.303781] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
[  188.717401] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
[  188.877277] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[  207.672663] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
tmulcahy@tmulcahy-desktop:~$

If you need any more info I will gladly dig it out.
If you reckon its not fixable I'd be glad if you could reccomend a wifi card thats likely to work well with Ubuntu.
Thanks for your help so far.

[pytheas22]

Tom: unfortunately, it seems that nothing got dumped to dmesg about the card's crash. This leaves us with virtually nothing to go on regarding why it went down. You could compile ndiswrapper from source with debugging enabled and hope to get some clues there, but that would be a huge amount of work and unless you can read source code (I can't), it probably wouldn't do any good.

So the only real advice I can offer is what I already said, that is, try it under Ubuntu 8.10, try compiling ndiswrapper from source, or try using a different Windows driver (remember to remove the one you currently have first). The ndiswrapper database (search that page for '1385:4251' to find the section relevant to your card) says that version 2.1 of the driver from Netgear's website works (you will need to extract it from the .exe file).

It's also possible that disabling encryption on your router might help, although I doubt you want to do that.

If you want to buy another card, there's a non-exhaustive list here of those that should work out-of-the-box in Ubuntu. Just be careful to pay attention to revision/version numbers and exact model names, because rev. A of a given card may be a completely different device from rev. B, as far as Linux is concerned. The only way to figure out for certain which chipset your card has is to plug it into a computer and run 'lsusb' to get its XXXX:XXXX PCI ID number.

Sorry I can't offer any better advice. Please let me know if you have more questions regarding the potential solutions I mentioned or purchasing a new card.

Chris

[tmulcahy]

Thanks Chris,
I will try version 2.1 of the driver and let you know if it succeeds, thanks again.
Regards,Tom

[axe87]

OK - when I try a build from source, it has trouble with the kernel headers (which I've re-installed), as follows;

cbrown@cbrown-laptop:~/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53$ locate ndiswrapper | grep -v cbrown
cbrown@cbrown-laptop:~/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53$
cbrown@cbrown-laptop:~/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53$ make
make -C driver
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/cbrown/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53/driver'
make -C /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2-386 M=/home/cbrown/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53/driver
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2-386'
make[2]: Makefile: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** No rule to make target `Makefile'. Stop.
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2-386'
make[1]: *** [modules] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/cbrown/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53/driver'
make: *** [all] Error 2
cbrown@cbrown-laptop:~/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53$ ls /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2-386/Makefile
/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2-386/Makefile
cbrown@cbrown-laptop:~/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53$ ls -l !$
ls -l /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2-386/Makefile
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 2008-10-31 01:46 /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2-386/Makefile -> ../linux-headers-2.6.25-2/Makefile
cbrown@cbrown-laptop:~/MyDocuments/MyDownloads/ndiswrapper-1.53$ ls -l /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2/Makefile
ls: cannot access /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2/Makefile: No such file or directory

Seems like the install of the headers isn't providing a complete package.

I'm having the same problem building ndiswrapper, and have come to the same conclusion that the install of the headers doesn't provide a complete package. No /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.25-2 directory is created as shown by cnkbrown.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling linux-headers-2.6.25-2-386 several times. Is there some other way to get and install these files?

[pytheas22]

axe87: first, isn't the 2.6.25 kernel outdated now? Stable Intrepid should be using 2.6.27. Are you still running Intrepid alpha or something, and if so can you upgrade to the stable release?

Otherwise, I think the problem is that, at least in the .deb that I downloaded from here, the Makefile included in the headers directory in the package seems to be blank. This would explain why 'make' won't work. Unfortunately, however, I don't really know of a way to fix it, besides rewriting the Makefile by hand, which I don't know how to do. Maybe copying over a Makefile from the headers directory of another kernel would work? I have no idea.

I guess the best thing I can do is tell you to try to upgrade to the 2.6.27 kernel, or to use the ndiswrapper package (is there a reason you need to build it from source, i.e. the package doesn't work for you?). Also, are you sure your card requires ndiswrapper? In cnkbrown's case, as you can see, we ultimately solved the problem by using a native driver instead of ndiswrapper.