Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

[pytheas22]

BigMike007: which network is yours? Is it one of the BT hubs? If so, what kind of encryption are you using--WPA enterprise? I think that's why you're having trouble connecting; notice the bits in dmesg about "privacy configuration mismatch and mixed-cell disabled - disassociate."

Also, every network in range of you (the BTs and others) seems to be on channel 7, according to both the ndiswrapper and wl drivers. Are you positive your router is set to broadcast on channel 5? Could you check the configuration? Having all these networks on the same channel is not helping anything.

[BigMike007]

pytheas22:

My router (Netgear DG834N) is set to "Upto 270mbps". Channel is definitely set at 5 (this is the weird thing - when I have my Belkin 54g card in, WICD shows the channel correctly as in "5" - when the netgear card is in, it always says 7... so not sure where this is coming from...). As my router's mode is set to "up to 270mbps), the only encryption option is:

WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES]

, which is how I've set it up. Other option available of course is "None".

My network is actually the JEDMAC14007, not any of the BT hub ones.

This is so frustrating as I'm meant to be using a Netgear card which according to all the Netgear bumpf is the ideal card for the router I have...!

Thanks in advance pytheas22,

BM

[pytheas22]

BigMike007: I think the fact that your router is using protocol IEEE 802.11i (as opposed to 802.11g or 802.11n) is what ndiswrapper doesn't like. Could you please play around with different settings on your router--lower bit rate and different security options--to see if you can get connected? You may want to upgrade your router's firmware; this may give you more encryption options.

Also, it may be worth turning off security altogether just to verify that the connection works that way, and that the encryption is definitely the problem here.

It's also really strange that both drivers think your network is on channel 7 but you're sure it's not. There's no physical problem with this card, is there? Does it work on Windows?

[BigMike007]

pytheas22:

Hmmm... I'm not entirely familiar with regards to the IEEE 802.11i protocol you refer to... as far as I understand, my DG834N router is N standard, and I have set it to perform at N standard. My router has the latest firmware installed. The trouble I have with the router is the level of bit rates and their associated security. The router allows for the following:

"Upto 270 mbps":
None
WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES]

130 mbps
None
WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES]

g & b
None
WEP
WPA-PSK [TKIP]
WPA2-PSK [AES]
WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES]
WPA-802.1x
WPA2-802.1x

So, as you can see, without switching back to g & b, I only get the one level of encryption (excluding "None" of course). If the only way the card would work is at g & b speeds, then it would defeat the purpose of me buying a N router and N adapter in the first place; i.e. I wanted to take advantage of better speeds and coverage which N would have provided...

Anyway, I did try playing around with the different settings (including g & b), and I still cannot get the card to connect... seemed to get stuck obtaining IP address for the network... I even tried turning off encryption completely, bit still no joy...

I'm seriously thinking of looking to Belkin for a solution for my router/card etc... my old Belkin 54g card can connect to the router fine whilst it is set to "upto 270mbps" and WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES] encryption, so maybe thats the way to go..

On a side note, I really do appreciate the time and effort you have spent helping me out on this pytheas22... in the meantime, back to my Belkin 54g I think!!

Thanks,

BM

[pytheas22]

I'm not entirely familiar with regards to the IEEE 802.11i protocol you refer to... as far as I understand, my DG834N router is N standard, and I have set it to perform at N standard. My router has the latest firmware installed. The trouble I have with the router is the level of bit rates and their associated security. The router allows for the following:

I mentioned 802.11i because your 'iwlist scan' output says that that's the protocol being used (of course, 'iwlist scan' also thinks the router is on channel 7, so maybe we shouldn't trust it too much...which protocol does the Belkin card list?):

Cell 04 - Address: 00:1E:2A:12:A2:06
ESSID:"JEDMAC14007"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.442 GHz (Channel 7)
Quality:46/100 Signal level:-66 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=0
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK

ndiswrapper may not support 11n mode on your card (it's a tricky thing with ndiswrapper), or at least not with the Windows driver that you loaded. You might have better luck trying a different Windows driver, but I know you've already had a hit-and-miss experience with that. You should also make sure that your router is backwards-compatible--in other words, that it will work with devices that can't support 11n mode.

The other solution would be to go back to trying to connect with the 'wl' driver instead of ndiswrapper. This connected you before, but obviously there were issues actually transferring traffic. However, you might have better luck if you installed the latest built of the driver from Broadcom's site, which will be more up-to-date than the stock driver in Ubuntu 8.10. If you want to give that a try, run these commands to install the latest version of the driver (you will need to have an Internet connection first):

wget http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_27_14.tar.gz
tar -xzvf hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_27_14.tar.gz 
make -C /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build M=$(pwd)
sudo rmmod wl
sudo rmmod ndiswrapper
sudo insmod wl.ko

At this point, if all has gone well, the newly built 'wl' module will be inserted in your system, and you can try connecting with it. If it happens to work, we can make your system use it permanently--but for the time being, these changes will be lost when you reboot your computer.

***Note: if you have a 64-bit system, replace the first command in the instructions above with:

wget http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc-x86_64-v5_10_27_14.tar.gz

so that you grab the 64-bit code instead of 32-bit.

Of course, if you're happy enough purchasing another Belkin card, that might be the easiest way to go. Just make sure it's the same revision number as your other one, because different revisions of wireless cards can be completely different on the inside even though they identical the same on the outside and are sold under the same name.

[BigMike007]

pytheas22:

Thanks for your reply.

I ran the sudo iwlist scan command with my Belkin 54g in:

jamesd@jamesd-AcerLaptop:~$ sudo iwlist scan
[sudo] password for jamesd:
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

pan0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wmaster0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan1 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:1E:2A:12:A2:06
ESSID:"JEDMAC14007"
Mode:Master
Channel:5
Frequency:2.432 GHz (Channel 5)
Quality=70/100 Signal level:-57 dBm
Encryption keyn
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: Unknown: 2D1A1E181AFFFF000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Extra:tsf=000000028c09e00e
Extra: Last beacon: 776ms ago

Router is setup the same i.e. 270 mbps and encryption on.

I will try the latest Broadcom driver as you suggested. Will post back and let you know!

Thanks,

BM

[JohnPta]

I am back with more problems, the wireless network works when it connects but there is exactly the problem sometime I must try to connect for 7 to 8 times before it connects.
Could the "madwifi" driver for my card solve that problem?

[pytheas22]

JohnPta: the madwifi drivers (in particular the ath5k module) might work for your card, but my experience has been that they're very hit-and-miss with the ar242x devices. If you want to give ath5k a try, run this command:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-intrepid

Then reboot, and run these commands to unload ndiswrapper and load ath5k:

sudo rmmod ndiswrapper
sudo rmmod ath5k
sudo rmmod ath_pci
sudo rmmod ath9k
sudo modprobe ath5k
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

At this point, if all has gone well, your wireless card will be up and running under the ath5k driver. If not, please post the output of:

dmesg | tail -50
dmesg | grep -e ath -e wlan
iwconfig

Note also that if you want ndiswrapper back after this, you will probably have to remove the ath5k module manually ('sudo rmmod ath5k') and load ndiswrapper ('sudo modprobe ndiswrapper'), or add 'ath5k' to your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file.

BigMike007: I look forward to seeing your results with the newer 'wl' module. I'm curious as to whether it will work for you.

[BigMike007]

pytheas22:

So, I ran the commands you mentioned to download the latest Broadcom STA drivers... I noticed there were some error messages whilst the code was running, so have posted output below for you to look at...

jamesd@jamesd-AcerLaptop:~$ wget http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_s...0_27_14.tar.gz
--2009-02-07 18:20:16-- http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_s...0_27_14.tar.gz
Resolving www.broadcom.com... 208.70.88.55
Connecting to www.broadcom.com|208.70.88.55|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 524816 (513K) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: `hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_27_14.tar.gz.1'

100%[================================================== ========================>] 524,816 19.5K/s in 23s

2009-02-07 18:20:40 (22.2 KB/s) - `hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_27_14.tar.gz.1' saved [524816/524816]

jamesd@jamesd-AcerLaptop:~$ tar -xzvf hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5_10_27_14.tar.gz
lib/
lib/wlc_hybrid.o_shipped
lib/LICENSE.txt
src/
src/include/
src/include/epivers.h
src/include/bcmdefs.h
src/include/bcmendian.h
src/include/bcmutils.h
src/include/bcmwifi.h
src/include/linux_osl.h
src/include/linuxver.h
src/include/pcicfg.h
src/include/typedefs.h
src/include/wlioctl.h
src/include/proto/
src/include/proto/802.11.h
src/include/proto/802.1d.h
src/include/proto/bcmeth.h
src/include/proto/bcmevent.h
src/include/proto/ethernet.h
src/include/proto/wpa.h
src/include/osl.h
src/shared/
src/shared/linux_osl.c
src/wl/
src/wl/sys/
src/wl/sys/wl_dbg.h
src/wl/sys/wl_export.h
src/wl/sys/wl_iw.c
src/wl/sys/wl_iw.h
src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c
src/wl/sys/wl_linux.h
src/wl/sys/wlc_key.h
src/wl/sys/wlc_pub.h
Makefile
jamesd@jamesd-AcerLaptop:~$ make -C /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build M=$(pwd)
make: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-11-generic'
Building modules, stage 2.
MODPOST 1 modules
WARNING: modpost: missing MODULE_LICENSE() in /home/jamesd/wl.o
see include/linux/module.h for more information
make: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-11-generic'
jamesd@jamesd-AcerLaptop:~$ sudo rmmod wl
[sudo] password for jamesd:
ERROR: Module wl does not exist in /proc/modules

However, it is sort of working, albeit very very slowly... the signal stength is perfect 100% (which is what I was getting with the Intrepid version of the driver). However the connection does drop, and as I said before, the speed to load pages, navigate around etc is painfully slow... BUT, this is progress in that I am able to load pages using the adapter... is their anything else that can be done to fine tune??? Let me know anything you want me to post the output of!

So close...

Thanks,

BM

[pytheas22]

BigMike007: it looks like you built the new module successfully, but didn't actually load it (unless part of the output that you posted got cut off)--so you're still using the original 'wl' module. To load the new one, type:

sudo rmmod wl
sudo modprobe ~/wl.ko

If you don't get an error message (which you may--my 64-bit desktop at home doesn't want to load the module, although my 32-bit machine at work loaded it yesterday without issue), then your wireless card should be brought up under the new version of 'wl' at this point.