Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

theironknuckle · 2011-06-26 06:09:41

Hi, I've been trying to install Arch for over a month now. It's been a little hobby of mine and has provided lots of frustration. I've been using google and following the wiki to the letter, so please please please don't reply with "read the wiki" or a link to the "wireless configuration" wiki page

Major breakthrough: after a month of Arch refusing to install on my laptop I finally managed to get the damn thing installed on a second harddrive and dual booting with XP on my main PC! Now I need to install wireless drivers. I have no idea what's going wrong, please help me. I've messed with ndiswrapper for the official wireless drivers and the 64 bit wireless drivers. no luck so far. I will be happy with any working solution, so if anyone knows of some native drivers for this card I would appreciate knowing about it. Otherwise ndiswrapper is good

Details:
computer is 64 bit quad core intel.
Version of Arch is 64 bit.
Wireless card is the Netgear WG311v3

output of lspci | grep -i net:
<irrelevant Ethernet details>
05:01.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)

output of ndiswrapper -l:
mrv8335x64 : driver installed
device(11AB:1FAA) present

output of iwconfig (after modprobing ndiswrapper in):
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
#notice the lack of wlan0

output of ndiswrapper -m:
module configuration already contains alias directive

Any and all help appreciated, with the appreciation magnified tenfold if it results in a solution

ewaller · 2011-06-26 06:17:48

Could you post the output of lspci -nn | grep net ??

theironknuckle · 2011-06-26 06:23:20

lspci -nn | grep net gives:
<random ethernet card stuff>
05:01.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless [11ab:1faa] (rev 03)

ewaller · 2011-06-26 06:41:54

Not much to say -- yet.

That card does seem problematic. Based upon the Vendor Id : Card Id -- 11ab:1faa, there are some mumblings on Google that the RTL8187 driver may work. Others are adamant that there are no native drivers. YMMV.

I don't use ndiswrapper myself, and it was just deprecated in Archlinux, so, once you update, it will only exist in the AUR.

I'm still working the problem.

ewaller · 2011-06-26 06:45:53

A few other things:
The does the output of ip link show your card ?
Is the rtl8187 module loaded by chance?
Does dmesg contain anything useful about the card?

theironknuckle · 2011-06-26 22:52:29

ip link gives (a lot of stuff, I'll summarise)
1: lo: <stuff>
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2. eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
link/ether 00:24:1d:2a:86:3c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
# I see nothing related to my wireless card

dmesg | grep -i net (I tried searching for net, marvell, wire. Only net turned up any results):
Initializing cgroup subsys net_cls
NET: Registered protocol family 16
NetLabel: Initializing
NetLabel: domain hash size = 128
NetLabel: protocols = UNLABELED CIPSOV4
NetLabel unlabeled traffic allowed by default
NET: Registered protocol family 2
NET: Registered protocol family 1
ausit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
NET: Registered protocol family 17
Initializing network drop monitor service
r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded
#Again, I see nothing related to the card.

lsmod | grep -i rtl8187 returns absolutely nothing

I'll give that rtl8187 driver a go later today (when i have a bit more time) and post up the results, If there's anything else you can think of please say so, and I'll post up the results of those suggestions too.
Thanks for helping!

theironknuckle · 2011-06-27 02:06:28

I've tried to install the drivers and I've had no luck. I'm a bit confused on a few things:
1. Isn't Linux supposed to have a monolithic kernel? What's the deal with these kernel modules? I'm not complaining, because it means I don't have to recompile the kernel for every little change, but i'm still wondering what's happening
2. I can't find a download for the rtl8187 driver alone. Only thing I can find is a whole collection of drivers that includes the rtl8187.
3. why oh why do linux drivers insist on being distributed as source code and makefiles? (I'm definitely complaining this time, but I want to learn, if there's a good reason for it, enlighten me )

Attempts at compilation of this massive driver package are met with crashes and ridicule (Compilation errors). I think the incremental compilation goes through ok, because there's a long long list of .o files generated during the first make which doesn't appear on subsequent attempts. However I don't know if it's aborting while attempting to compile another module or when trying to link all the modules together. I'll post the results of a second make command:

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.33-ARCH/build M=/mnt/sex/compat-wireless-2011-06-26 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.33-ARCH'
CC [M] /mnt/sex/compat-wireless-2011-06-26/net/bluetooth/smp.o
/mnt/sex/compat-wireless-2011-06-26/net/bluetooth/smp.c:29:28: fatal error: crypto/b128ops.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[3]: *** [/mnt/sex/compat-wireless-2011-06-26/net/bluetooth/smp.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [/mnt/sex/compat-wireless-2011-06-26/net/bluetooth] Error 2
make[1]: *** [_module_/mnt/sex/compat-wireless-2011-06-26] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.33-ARCH'
make: *** [modules] Error 2

What helpful error messages! Error 1, Error 2.

The really annoying part is that it might be crashing on some driver which I don't even need. Due to the massive wall of debug output and the many and varied source files, it's really hard to tell what's going on. I tried using the "driver select" script but it didn't change the result at all. same output as above. Makes me wonder if the script is broken, if the drivers are broken, if my computer is broken, if i'm missing some fundamental package etc etc etc. XD It's the state of confusion and the sense of being absolutely lost which I have only ever experienced through my experiments with linux Every other time it's happened I've given up, this time I want to push through.

ewaller · 2011-06-27 02:45:49

For question 1, see This Wikipedia article. It points out the difference between Monolithic (as in architecture) vs Monolithic (as in loadable modules).
For question 3, I presume it is because they are not architecture dependent (x86, x86_64, arm, PowerPc, etc...) Even so, it may be nice to compile kernel modules for a specific processor, or to allow for generic processors. In my case, I compile my own kernel with optimizations for this Core 2 Duo processor as opposed to a "Generic 64 bit x86)". Since the modules must be compatible, it only makes sense to compile them. Also, there many good reasons to not accept binaries one cannot build oneself.

The root of your compile problem is:

/mnt/sex/compat-wireless-2011-06-26/net/bluetooth/smp.c:29:28: fatal error: crypto/b128ops.h: No such file or directory

On my system, that file lives at

/usr/src/linux-2.6.39-ARCH/include/crypto/b128ops.h

How are you compiling the drivers?
And, why are you not installing aur/rtl8187-ng ??

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-26 06:09:41

Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

#2 2011-06-26 06:17:48

Re: Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

#3 2011-06-26 06:23:20

Re: Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

#4 2011-06-26 06:41:54

Re: Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

#5 2011-06-26 06:45:53

Re: Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

#6 2011-06-26 22:52:29

Re: Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

#7 2011-06-27 02:06:28

Re: Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

#8 2011-06-27 02:45:49

Re: Help with wireless (netgear wg311v3)

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