[Ndiswrapper-general] WMP54G Working Under Fedora-Core-1

[Ford, C. <col...@sp...>]

Hi,

I'm really happy and very thankful for this project. I've had my Linksys
WMP54G for
over six months now and could not use it with Linux. But last night I got it
working and
am now surfing from boot without any manual intervention.

I now wish I had kept a lab book of what I did to get it going but as with
everything in
life - you can always get it right with hindsight (in fact you've only got
to worry when you
cant ;-)

My Linux was so old that I did a fresh install with Fedora-Core-1 which I
got from a computer
mag. I then downloaded the ndiswrapper from source forge version 0.4. I used
the Broadcom
drivers downloaded from the links on the ndiswrapper home page. 

The install went ok without a hitch. My set up had 64bit WEP turned on so I
used the
commands:

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 key [1] <key> restricted essid <ssid>
iwconfig wlan0 key on

I then did:

ifconfig wlan0 up

and to get the IP-Address (my AP is setup to be a DHCP server)

dhclient wlan0

and what do you know it got it! From here I used the Redhat network config
tool to setup
the boot stuff:

redhat-config-network-gui

I added the ndiswrapper as a network device and set it up so that it would
DHCP at boot
and get the DNS as well.

I then tried the setup out with:

ifdown wlan0
ifup wlan0

this didn't work and complained about the setting of the key. So I went and
had a dig around
in the ifcfg files (which I think off the top of my head are in
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/)

The problem I traced to two files the ifcfg-wireless-key? (I think that's
what its called) It had
the key definition as s:<key> and that did not work for my WMP54G. So I
changed that to
be just the hex key value without the string set "s:". I then tried again
with:

ifup wlan0

but the DHCP would not work. So I hacked the file ifup-wireless so that
where the KEY is
set I changed the first line and added one:

iwconfig $device key [1] $key restricted       <-- changed line from
iwconfig key $key
iwconfig $device key on                              <-- added this one
after the last

Then tested it with:

ifup wlan0

and what do you know? It worked! Using ifconfig I saw that the device had an
IP address
and that packets where flowing!!!!!!!!! Because I had set the DNS check box
when configuring
the ndiswrapper device with redhat-config-network-gui it also sorted out the
default gateway
and domain name server. So I was up and surfing. Just as a note - you can
also check the
ifcfg-wireless file while your in here to make sure that all the settings
that you made using
the redhat-config-network-gui are correct. Remeber the key has its own file.

I'd also set the check box about coming up at boot time. I rebooted the
machine and yes it
works from cold!!!!

Hope this goes some way to help anyone else having trouble.
Many thanks,
Col.