wireless internet on redhat linux ?

Hi,

Could some please help me in configuring wireles internet on redhat linux installed on my laptop.

When I booted using windows, I saw the following, which I think is the name of my laptop's wireless card:

Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection

I have run the following steps after seeing a forum:

extract it with the command

tar zxvf ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz

This will create ndiswrapper-version directory. Change to that
directory and run

make uninstall
  make

Login as root and run

 
make install
lspci -n

Once the driver has been unpacked, locate .inf and .sys files. If
necessary, move these files so both .inf and .sys are in the same
directory. Some drivers also come with firmware files, such as
fwrad16.bin etc. These files also should be in the same
directory. Then install the Windows driver with

 
ndiswrapper -i netw3.inf
ndiswrapper -l

This should report
"driver present, hardware present"

modprobe ndiswrapper

I got the following commands in a forum:

 
su -
ifconfig eth0 up
dhclient eth0

But still no internet:

ifconfig

o/p :

lo no wireless connections
eth0 no wireless connections

Regards,
Girish.

---------- Post updated at 03:48 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:14 PM ----------

Radoulov,

Could you transfer this post to the Experts section, please?
I did not get any responses in the scripting section, hence I had tried to post it in the experts section when I saw that this post was already closed in the dummies and scripting section.

i moved this to the redhat forum where it belongs...

you are sure you need ndiswrapper for this card? or is this a real old redhat version? and eth0 should be the internal lan card... maybe you should try eth1!?

Hi Duke,

I am not sure if ndsiwrapper is required.
I saw an alternate method (may be the right method) at Intel� PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Driver for Linux
But I thought this was very long and complicated.

Well the results after installing the ndsiwrapper as follows:

 
[root@localhost v32]# ndiswrapper -l
netw3 : driver installed
        device (8086:4222) present
netw5v32 : driver installed
        device (8086:4222) present
[root@localhost v32]# iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.
sit0      no wireless extensions.
 
[root@localhost v32]# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:D4:DE:04:2D  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:58 
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:2056 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2056 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:2476700 (2.3 MiB)  TX bytes:2476700 (2.3 MiB)
 
[root@localhost v32]# ifconfig eth0 up
[root@localhost v32]# dhclient eth0
[root@localhost v32]# 

I will try using eth1 and let you know.
One more thing, I went to system-->administration-->network
Under devices I could see 1 device only --> eth0

When I tried to activate it, it waited for some seconds and said "no link found check cable." So as you said, it could be the lan card.

Under hardware I could see 1 entry only --> broadcom something
I couldnt see intel 3945abg anywhere.

none of the above interfaces is your wireless interface!

[root@localhost v32]# iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.
sit0      no wireless extensions.

Duke,

Yes, I think it is wlan0.
When I start linux in the interactive mode, I can see that eth0 and some other network devices are brought up but the wlan0 device fails to be brought up.

The following messages are displayed while linux starts and also when I try to manually run the wpa_supplicant command:

 
[root@localhost ~]# wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

ioctl[SIOCSIWPMKSA]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWMODE]: No such device
Could not configure driver to use managed mode
ioctl[SIOCGIFFLAGS]: No such device
Could not set interface 'wlan0' UP
ioctl[SIOCGIWRANGE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCGIFINDEX]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODE]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: No such device
WEXT auth param 7 value 0x0 - Failed to disable WPA in the driver.
ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: No such device
WEXT auth param 5 value 0x0 - ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: No such device
WEXT auth param 4 value 0x0 - ioctl[SIOCSIWAP]: No such device
ioctl[SIOCGIFFLAGS]: No such device

Try this. Do an lsmod to see if their is an open source driver in use for your wireless card. If there is do an rmmod to remove it from kernel space. Last do an

 insmod /lib/modules/<kernel_version>/misc/ndiswrapper.ko

If The path with the insmod doesn't work run this find command to locate it:

find /lib -name "*ndiswrapper*"

After doing this your wireless card should show up. I can't remember how to do this off the top of my head but you should also modify your udev rules to make sure that the correct module gets loaded at boot.

I did a lsmod. I got a long list which didnt seem to have the wireless drvice or its driver info.
Then I found the path of ndiswrapper.ko and ran insmod <path>
The device was still not brought up :frowning:

I have attached some files which contain the o/p of the following commands:

lspci
lspci -nlsmod
dmesg
[root@localhost ~]# uname -r2.6.18-53.el5
dmesg | grep firmware

gave out nothing

can you maybe try another linux distro? download the ubuntu live cd and have a look if the interface is working... i've no trouble with the same intel chipset on my laptop with ubuntu.

Thanks Nuke, but I think I will try for some more time...