ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

storyteller · 2006-07-25 22:27:44

I have a Broadcom 4318 wireless pci card (Bad purchase, I know). I had it working (kinda) through ndiswrapper with 2.6.16 series kernel, but the connection was atrocious. This morning I attempted to do pacman -Syu, and after about 6 hours of manually restarting it (the card hits 0.0 kbs about every 2 minutes and will hang there for hours unless pacman -Syu is manually reissued) I found a wiki page referring to bcm43xx. The wiki says that kernels >2.6.17 will support my card without need of ndiswrapper. I decided to give it a try.
So, I upgraded from kernel 2.6.16 to 2.6.17. It took me 7 tries before I procured an uncorrupted copy of the files needed to upgrade the kernel.
Mistake #1:
I failed to keep a backup copy of the working 2.6.16 kernel on my system before upgrading.
So, after I upgraded to 2.6.17 kernel, I installed and setup bcm43xx according to the wiki instructions. Appearently my card is the only one in the bcm 43xx series that does not work with the bcm43xx driver. I found this out after destroying my wireless connection.
So I attempted to reinstall ndiswrapper, but since the machine will not go online now, the only copy of ndiswrapper I have is built for 2.6.16 kernel (which I no longer have). I downloaded a fresh copy of ndiswrapper source on a friends machine and attempted to build it on my machine running kernel 2.6.17.....it builds fine...it installs fine...it successfully wrapped the drivers for my card...however it will not modprobe.
I get the error, "Invalid module format"
So, I took the card out and put it in a windows machine to try to get help...but I'm unable to connect to irc.freenode.net (which seems to be the only servers worth connecting to) and here i type.
I would really appreciate it if someone could give me a link to download kernel 2.6.16, or a copy of ndiswrapper that works with the 2.6.17 kernel.

Thanks in advance

user · 2006-07-25 23:02:03

Maybe i could be wrong, but I heard no longer need ndiswrapper(win32 emulate right?), can directly use the broadcom.

storyteller · 2006-07-26 00:03:40

In my initial post I tried to be as brief as possible, but I left a few important things out.
hwd -s does not list my card, though lspci does.
iwconfig shows what looks correct for the card, but it is listed as eth0 (which is reserved for a lan card that links this machine to another)
ifconfig lists my lan card as eth0, but does not list wlan0 (Which is how the card was listed with ndiswrapper).
So ifconfig lists my lan card as eth0, and iwconfig lists eth0 with properties of my wireless connection such as essid, key and such.
I tried doing ifconfig wlan0 up, but of course that failed...iwconfig does not list a wlan0 to pass to ifconfig.
When using ndiswrapper I had to add a line:
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
to my modprobe.conf file.
Using bcm43xx I tried commenting out the line, leaving the line as is, and changing it to:
alias wlan0 bcm43xx
but none made any difference at all.
I tried doing a iwconfig scan of eth0 (since iwconfig appears to allocate that to my wlan), but it says interface not scannable.

I'm at a loss here as to what to try...I have rebuilt the ndiswrapper module several times after doing make clean, but I still get "Invalid module format ndiswrapper.ko"

I cant seem to find a prepackaged arch kernel <2.6.17now...
and to add insult to injury I'm in the middle of nowhere, so I'm stuck with the hardware I have

storyteller · 2006-07-26 00:05:34

user: The wiki says that ndiswrapper is no longer needed as of 2.6.17 kernel, but after much googling I have yet to hear of anyone successfully using bcm43xx with the card I have (bcm4318)

user · 2006-07-26 02:50:06

Then you have to modify it untill it works, it called "device driver porting"..
with endless day and night.

BTW, within 5 clicks in google.com
I found this
http://bcm43xx.berlios.de

HTH(hope this help), GIYF(google is your(coz nobody can't expect where google go(though their motto is "don't be evil"(unless, "your" will be "our" ))) friend)

storyteller · 2006-07-26 02:59:58

I've followed every link on that site at least twice...following the instructions works step by step and everything goes according to the instructions until ifconfig -a
The firmware cutter extracts the drivers properly and everything looks good including modprobe bcm43xx
But it never passes the interface to ifconfig.

Thanks for trying for me though

user · 2006-07-26 04:07:50

Okay, now this is shown up 2 clicks in google.com
http://forum.fedoraforum.org/forum/show … p?t=117065

HTH

storyteller · 2006-07-26 06:13:15

I tried everything but hooking my card to the kitchen sink...2.6.17 kernel just plain will not work as it sits. bcm43xx kernel drivers will not work, and ndiswrapper will not work with the 2.6.17 kernel.
Fortunately I found a copy of kernel26-2.6.16.2-1 on my sys.
ndiswrapper modprobed the first try through with 2.6.16, but I have a lot of work to do to make it useable. I'm pinging google (usually around 32ms) at 1 second , and pacman will not work with this connection...but it's a start.
Thanks again for the help user

phrakture · 2006-07-26 14:58:31

Do you have a custom compiled kernel? ndiswrapper is running perfectly here on two machines running 2.6.17. Also, make sure you blacklist bcm43xx so that it doesn't load automatically and muck things up.

Instead of trying to build the module yourself, why not download the official package and pacman -A it?

storyteller · 2006-07-26 18:41:31

For some reason I cannot connect to any ftp server in any fashion...thus I can't download ndiswrapper precompiled from arch repo. I have a windows machine here that I can access it with, but the pci slots are messed up, so I have to reboot and wiggle the card over and over to get it exactly seated before the win machine will register the card. I have only the one card to work with, so I have to pull it out of this machine to get the win machine online.
What a mess.
Thank you for the help though

storyteller · 2006-07-27 22:17:28

I managed to connect to ftp.archlinux.org and upgrade ndiswrapper from repo...I'm not sure why I'm unable to build a working module from source, but the binary from repo works fine with 2.6.17 kernel.
Thank you both for taking the time to help me troubleshoot my issues
I love this distro

Arch Linux

#1 2006-07-25 22:27:44

ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#2 2006-07-25 23:02:03

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#3 2006-07-26 00:03:40

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#4 2006-07-26 00:05:34

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#5 2006-07-26 02:50:06

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#6 2006-07-26 02:59:58

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#7 2006-07-26 04:07:50

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#8 2006-07-26 06:13:15

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#9 2006-07-26 14:58:31

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#10 2006-07-26 18:41:31

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

#11 2006-07-27 22:17:28

Re: ndiswrapper broken with kernel 2.6.17? (Fixed)

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