Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

[AlP36]

I had intended to mention that command, because I had to add the vendor and product ID's in the form xxx(space)xxxx. Here are the results:

Step #15:
alp910@alp910-desktop:~/ndiswrapper-stuff$ sudo load_fw_ar5523 ar5523.bin
main(204): no valid device found; if you are sure you have Atheros USBbased device, UNPLUG AND REPLUG THE DEVICE, run 'load_fw_ar5523' again with vendor and product ids, which can be obtained with 'lsusb' command

Step 15a:
alp910@alp910-desktop:~/ndiswrapper-stuff$ sudo load_fw_ar5523 ar5523.bin 0cf3 0002
loading firmware for device 0x0CF3:0x0002 ...
done
alp910@alp910-desktop:~/ndiswrapper-stuff$

However, lsusb still gives the (no firmware) for the ar5523. Thus:

alp910@alp910-desktop:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0cf3:0002 Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5523 (no firmware)
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0ace:1215 ZyDAS WLA-54L WiFi

Then after I saw the output of ndiswrapper -l:

alp910@alp910-desktop:~/ndiswrapper-stuff$ ndiswrapper -l
net5523 : driver installed
netwpn111 : driver installed
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
zd1211bu : driver installed
device (0ACE:1215) present (alternate driver: zd1211rw)

I began looking for what was there for the zd1211 and found the "alias usb" line I mentioned before in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper. I am not sure though what put the "alias usb" line in there and it may not apply to the present case since Ubuntu 9.10 recognized the zd1211 chip, it just didn't connect to the router until I added the different driver.

One question about the commands I entered tho. Why was it necessary to install the wpn111 driver? I believe I had found something about that driver when I loaded the alternate driver for the zd1211.

[pytheas22]

AlP36: thanks again for the information. The fact that the firmware loader proceeds without dumping any error messages, yet does not get rid of the "No firmware" line in 'lsusb', is not exactly encouraging. But it's also better than getting an error. I think for the time being we may as well proceed under the assumption that the firmware is being loaded properly, since I don't really have any better ideas.

I had you load the WPN111 driver because I thought, based on this post, that it might drive your card. I was probably wrong on that account (I'm not actually sure right now why I thought that would work; it's possible I was totally confused on that point when I was writing out the commands the other night). All the same, it looks from your 'ndiswrapper -l' output now that you have a driver for ar5523 installed (did you install that on your own? I don't think any of the commands I had you run would have installed it), but it's still not recognizing the device.

Do you remember how we got 'ndiswrapper -l' to report "device present" for the ar5523 card before? I looked through previous posts in this thread but all I can see is that we tried to force ndiswrapper to drive the device. Did you ever actually find a .inf file that has the correct vendor and product IDs for the device in it?

I think the next step should be to get the 'ndiswrapper -l' output to report "device present," and then try starting the card up, once the firmware is loaded (regardless of whether 'lsusb' thinks it's loaded or not). To do that, we'll need to find the right .inf file to load into ndiswrapper (or try forcing it to drive the device using the 'ndiswrapper -a' command, but that's not ideal).

[AlP36]

I will try to reconstruct what we did the first time. I wanted to do that for my own edification.
I got this error when I executed the purge command:
dpkg: warning: while removing ndiswrapper-common, directory '/etc/ndiswrapper' not empty so not removed.

I looked at '/etc/ndiswrapper' and it contained the driver for the zd1211 so I left it.
I just checked the dates on the folders '/etc/ndiswrapper' and the one for ar5523 was generated on Thursday Jan 21. I started on the latest commands and the wpn111 folder was generated on Jan 22. I just found the command in my recent history where I installed the 5523 prior to starting the last round of commands. Should I remove it?

I will go through the earlier posts and see what we did.

Do you want me to attach the entire sequence from the latest commands?

[pytheas22]

You can leave the ar5523 driver for now. It would be good to know how you got ndiswrapper to report "device present" a few weeks ago, however. The more I think about it the more I think you just used "ndiswrapper -a ..." but maybe I'm wrong.

Seeing the entire sequence of commands wouldn't hurt.

Let me know if you figure out what you did last time...

[AlP36]

Here is a listing of all responses to the lst series of commands.

[pytheas22]

Thanks for that output. Unfortunately nothing stood out to me that we hadn't already noted before.

However, I've done some more research on the overall issue tonight and found another version of the Windows driver that may work better. Please try running these commands to install it (it was hard to extract the files from the driver--I had to use a virtual machine--so I uploaded them to my website to save time):

sudo ndiswrapper -r net5523
wget http://burnthesorbonne.com/files/net5523.tar.gz
tar -xzvf net5523.tar.gz
sudo ndiswrapper -i net5523.inf

Now please check to see if the output of:

ndiswrapper -l

reports "device present" for the ar5523 device. If this works, it will solve a major hurdle.

[mango42]

pytheas22, I am truly humbled by your sustained efforts to get these ar5523 chips to work on Linux; I was fumbling in the dark before I came across this excellent and comprehensive thread (using the IP-free www.startpage.com rather than the evil googlemonster) but will now try again, using your 'net5523.inf' rather than the one on the WiFi install CD.

@ AIP36 Mere curiosity prompts me to ask why you are still using Dapper Drake? I never could get any Wifi card working until 8.04 came along

[mango42]

Here, I get the following:-

$ ndiswrapper -l
net5523 : driver installed

but no ID...

... on to modprobe...

[KuBala]

Hey fellows,

I have 9.10 x86. I have an usb wlan adapter zion x7 (1286:1FAB). It works well, I have connection. I used ndisgtk to set it up, and its original xp/2k drivers are running.
The only problem is when the wlan adapter is plugged in the hibernation does not work: won't turn off but hangs. If I remove it the hibernation is perfect.

Can you recommend some trick which turns off the usb before hibernation then turn it on after waking up?

(the interesting thing is the same happens with the hibernation at xp. So I blame the xp drivers. There's another model with the same chip 1286:1FAB, it's zonet, but it's .inf and .sys are bit-by-bit identical to zio so does not make much difference to change)

Thanks for any hints

[pytheas22]

mango42: thanks for the message. As you can see, we still haven't figured out how to get the ar5523 working, but hopefully we will soon. I'd be interested to know the output of these two commands on your system:

grep 0002 /etc/ndiswrapper/net5523/net5523.inf
ls /etc/ndiswrapper/net5523/
lsusb

KuBala: you can probably write a script to remove the ndiswrapper module before you hibernate your computer, and then reinsert it upon waking up. This should effectively work around the issue. To do that, type:

sudo gedit /etc/pm/sleep.d/11_ndiswrapper

Copy and paste this into that file:

#!/bin/bash

case "${1}" in
        hibernate)
         	touch /root/ndiswrapper-sleep
                rmmod ndiswrapper       
                ;;
        resume|thaw)
		# nothing
                modprobe ndiswrapper
                touch /root/ndiswrapper-wake
                ;;
esac

Then type this command:

sudo chmod +x /etc/pm/sleep.d/11_ndiswrapper

Then try hibernating. If nothing seems to have changed, please let me know the output of:

sudo ls /root/ndis*