[Haifux] NdisWrapper, anyone?

[Eli Billauer]

Hello again.


It may look as if I'm talking with myself here, but the truth is that I 
got several replies in private, again. This time the word was that 
NdisWrapper should be the last resource. So now I get it: I didn't ask a 
stupid question. I wanted to discuss shrimp salad recipes in a 
synagogue. Many of you make them at home, but nobody wants to admit that 
openly. ;)


So let's clam down about this, OK? NdisWrapper isn't against open source 
drivers, since it's a hack solution which can never install 
automatically: It requires finding the Windows files by hand. So for a 
distribution, only native drivers are to choose. But as an ad-hoc 
solution, it's fantastic. For those who want their computers working, 
that is.


Anyhow, thanks to those who tried to help. As I implied earlier, I don't 
really know why I began messing with wireless, since I don't have any 
use of it right now. The interesting issue for me was that a catch-all 
solution exists, even if it pollutes the kernel with yuck-yuck 
proprietary code.


So, to wrap this little saga up, I detail my own experience. Short 
version: It was easy.


---------------------------


First, I tried "yum install ndiswrapper". Was that optimistic, or what? 
Not in Red Hat's repositories, it wasn't.


So I downloaded a tarball from 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/ (that's the way I really 
like it).


And I ran "yum install kernel-devel-2.6.25-14.fc9.i686" (just 
"kernel-devel" would be enough for those who are ready to upgrade their 
kernel at the same time). Would you believe that I ran a computer 
without its kernel sources on it?


And then simply "make" from the project's home directory. And "make 
install" as root. No, there was no autoconfigure.


And then


ndiswrapper -i Rt2500.inf


And the driver was installed:


[root at rouge ~]# ndiswrapper -l
rt2500 : driver installed
    device (1814:0201) present (alternate driver: rt2500pci)


Are these guys nice or what? They actually tell me that I shouldn't need 
to work with their utility (assuming that the real driver is OK, which 
it isn't).


I should mention, that the card is a RaLink RT2500, which has drivers 
with several branches. (one of which was loaded automatically from the 
very beginning). There's also an official driver from Edimax.  So odds 
are, that I would get the thing working if I cared to try which one 
works. But really, that wasn't the point.


Thank you all, again.

    Eli


Eli Billauer wrote:

> Hello again,
>
> For the first time ever, I got several replies in private, and only 
> one on-list. I think that means "you asked a stupid question, but I 
> wouldn't like to embarrass you in front of everyone".
>
> So thanks to those who replied.
>
> And I suppose I'll read the HOWTO and get the thingy working. Unless 
> someone else thinks this is an interesting topic.
>
>    Eli


-- 
Web: http://www.billauer.co.il

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