Wireless Card + Ubunu

[watercooled]

I've been trying for a while to get my wireless PC card working with Ubuntu. It's a Netgear WG511v2 and it was made in China (I believe that makes a difference). I've searched the net for a solution but so far nothing has worked. I slide the card in and neither of the LEDs light or anything. I don't think Ubuntu is recognising either the card or the PCMCIA bus. Does anyone know how to get it working?
Thanks

[directhex]

Make sure you try the absolute latest version of Ubuntu you can - including the 9.04 beta if available

Can you paste the output from running "lspci" in a console?

[watercooled]

I am using Ubuntu 8.10 fully updated.

Here's the console output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset Host Bridge (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801CAM IDE U100 Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go] (rev a3)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801CAM (ICH3) PRO/100 VE (LOM) Ethernet Controller (rev 42)
02:0b.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC100 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with ZV Support (rev 32)
02:0b.1 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC100 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with ZV Support (rev 32)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)

Thanks

[directhex]

Hm, Marvell chip. Doesn't look great tbh. Can you use "lspci -n" too? it'll return PCI-ID identifiers i can check

[directhex]

Okay, as best I can determine, there's an INCREDIBLY immature driver for Marvell TOPDOG chips in the beta version of Ubuntu (immature as in the guy only released his first version in October), but it only supports PCI ID 2a2b or 2a30. The alternative is icky - NDISWrapper is a tool to use Windows wireless drivers. The "ndisgtk" package should install an app for you to handle installing the driver from the CD (the .inf file)

[watercooled]

Here's what lspci -n returned:
00:00.0 0600: 8086:1a30 (rev 05)
00:01.0 0604: 8086:1a31 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:2482 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 0c03: 8086:2484 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 0604: 8086:2448 (rev 42)
00:1f.0 0601: 8086:248c (rev 02)
00:1f.1 0101: 8086:248a (rev 02)
00:1f.5 0401: 8086:2485 (rev 02)
00:1f.6 0703: 8086:2486 (rev 02)
01:00.0 0300: 10de:0175 (rev a3)
02:08.0 0200: 8086:1031 (rev 42)
02:0b.0 0607: 1179:0617 (rev 32)
02:0b.1 0607: 1179:0617 (rev 32)
03:00.0 0200: 11ab:1faa (rev 03)

I'll give ndiswrapper a try. Thanks again for your help.

Edit: I tried using the WinXP driver from the windows partition but NDISWrapper said 'Invalid Driver'. I'll go find the CD and try the Win 2k driver...

Edit2: OK, I just installed the Win 2K driver and I'm not getting the 'invalid driver' response now. What should I do next?

[directhex]

Edit2: OK, I just installed the Win 2K driver and I'm not getting the 'invalid driver' response now. What should I do next?

Try a reboot. Then see what "ifconfig -a" says. With any luck it'll list a wifi card, e.g. wlan0 or eth1

[watercooled]

OK, now when I enter 'sudo ndiswrapper -m' I get 'modprobe config already contains a alias directive'. What does this mean? I can get the leds blinking by using 'sudo modprobe ndiswrapper' but I can't seem to find the network.

[directhex]

OK, now when I enter 'sudo ndiswrapper -m' I get 'modprobe config already contains a alias directive'. What does this mean? I can get the leds blinking by using 'sudo modprobe ndiswrapper' but I can't seem to find the network.

When you ran "ifconfig -a", was a wireless device listed? Try "iwconfig" instead, is one of the network devices marked a wireless?

[watercooled]

Sorry I missed that post. For both requests, wlan0 is showing but only after running sudo modprobe ndiswrapper. I think that has something to do with the error in post 8 ie it's not running at boot.

[watercooled]

When I run 'iwlist wlan0 scan' I can see my network so I think the card must be functioning now. I just can't figure out how to establish a connection so far. I did try to enter some settings using iwconfig, is there a way to reset them?
Thanks again

Edit: OK after a bit of time I managed to get connected. Now I just need to get ndiswrapper to start at boot...

Edit2: Yay, I managed to get it to start at boot by using ndiswrapper -ma. Only thing is I'm apparently getting ~50% signal strength even though the AP is about 2m away...

[directhex]

When I run 'iwlist wlan0 scan' I can see my network so I think the card must be functioning now. I just can't figure out how to establish a connection so far. I did try to enter some settings using iwconfig, is there a way to reset them?
Thanks again

Edit: OK after a bit of time I managed to get connected. Now I just need to get ndiswrapper to start at boot...

Edit2: Yay, I managed to get it to start at boot by using ndiswrapper -ma. Only thing is I'm apparently getting ~50% signal strength even though the AP is about 2m away...

Your signal strength may be misreported - remember, you're loading Windows drivers here. It really shouldn't be amy more possible than running Mac OS X drivers in Windows.

For future reference, /etc/modules is a file listing drivers to load at boot

[watercooled]

Ah right. Thanks for all your help!