Successful WPC54G install FC2 using ndiswrapper

[Jeff Ludwig]

Hello everyone... just got my wireless card working and took some good 
notes I thought I would share with everyone...  this little writeup is 
also on my wiki, http://www.rockytop.net/tavi/index.php?page=WPC54G feel 
free to make changes if I've missed something...

This installation was performed on a Dell Inspiron 8000 running Fedora 
Core 2 (linux 2.6.7-1.494.2.2) using ndiswrapper-0.9, but I hope the 
procedure is general enough to be of some value to others. The first 
step was to obtain the kernel source code, this was accomplished via yum:

yum install kernel-sourcecode

It turns out in several Fedora kernels there is a kernel option which 
can cause problems, CONFIG_4KSTACKS. I recovered the kernel config by 
issuing a "make oldconfig" then checked ".config" to make sure the 
CONFIG_4KSTACKS option was not selected. For my particular choice of 
kernel it was not, but if it is selected you will need to rebuild your 
kernel.

Next, download and unpack the ndiswrapper package and install the 
utilities as root: "make; make install"

Attempt to load your windows driver, for me "ndiswrapper -i 
/mnt/cdrom/lsbcmnds.inf" did the trick. Issue a "ndiswrapper -l" and 
make sure the program does recognize your card as present. Next, issue a 
modprobe ndiswrapper to load the relevant kernel module and follow with 
iwconfig to see if your card is present.

So far so good, next I ran "gnome-network-preferences", selected the 
configure option then setup a dummy wireless card on eth1 (pick any 
wireless driver) but used the proper ESSID, channel number and gateway. 
This should create the script 
"/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1". Copy this file to 
"ifcfg-wlan0" and edit this file, changing the interface from eth1 to 
wlan0 and modify any other details to match your system. At this point I 
issued a "/sbin/ifup wlan0" and everything worked (after about 20 tries 
of screwing with card settings).

For load on startup, all I did was add one line to /etc/modprobe.conf: 
"alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" -- and somehow everything worked on next 
startup. It seems to me the ifup command somehow instructs the system 
which interfaces to load on startup as well as doing a host of other 
things... Read the ndiswrapper "INSTALL" instructures, they are very 
good altho I my /lib/modules/../build directory was *not* linked to the 
kernel source.

Cheers,
Jeff