December 25, 2008

SOLVED: Install WiFi on eee box. Using ndiswrapper.

I have installed SUSE on eee Box B202. It works but i had a problem with wireless driver installation. I found this tutorial and it helped ;). Use CD-Disk with Windows drivers from your eee Box package. Just use rt2860 driver.

"Installing Ndiswrapper Drivers: Locate the XP drivers on the install CD that came with the device or if you don't have it, download them from the manufacturer's site. Copy the whole contents of the directory containing the XP .inf file to a directory anywhere in your Suse filesystem, e.g in the directory "ndiswrapper" located at /path_to/ndiswrapper. For illustration, suppose the .inf is abcde.inf, now located at /path_to/ndiswrapper/abcde.inf. Open a console and first enter su to get rootly powers. Then enter the command ndiswrapper -i /path_to/ndiswrapper/abcde.inf. Here's the dialogue:
frednurk@suse110:~> su
Password:
suse110 # ndiswrapper -i /path_to/abcde.inf

All being well you can enter the diagnostic command ndiswrapper -l and receive a positive response something like this:
frednurk@suse110:~> su
Password:
suse110 # ndiswrapper -l
abcde : driver installed
device (2001:3A03) present
suse110 #

If you receive a message like device (2001:3A03) present (alternate driver ), then you have a possible conflict with a Linux native driver and will need to add the name of the Linux driver into the blacklist file located at /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.

To check whether the kernel module is present, execute the modprobe command as root:
frednurk@suse110:~> su
Password:
suse110 # modprobe ndiswrapper
suse110 #

In this case, no response means success. If you get an error message like "Module ndiswrapper not found", you have a problem.

Ndiswrapper should load at boot time. For some it doesn't. If you find that it doesn't, just add the command modprobe ndiswrapper into the bottom of the file boot.ini located at /etc/init.d/boot.ini, and it will load at boot time.
frednurk@suse110:~> su
Password:
suse110 # ndiswrapper -m
adding "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper ...
suse110 #

Should you need to uninstall ndiswrapper at some time, please follow the examples given on the Ndiswrapper Wiki. All being well, you can now proceed to configure the wireless device in Yast for Internet and LAN access." swerdna.net.au

1 comment:

  1. Linux Newbie21 January, 2009

    Hi!I am also looking for some info on NDISwrapper.

    I've not yet installed it(am trying to collect as much info as possible so that I don't mess up later.)

    In the process,I stumbled upon the following video http://linuxtutorialvideos.blogspot.com/2009/01/ndiswrapper.htmlwhich shows the installation of NDISwrapper and also some basic troubleshooting.

    Don't know if it'll be useful to you,but decided to share it anyway.

    ReplyDelete