Ndiswrapper
Knowledgebase
Situation
You want to use a network card supported by Windows drivers (NDIS) with Linux.
NDIS, which stands for "Network Device Interface Specification", is a standard for the connection of network cards (hardware) to network protocols (software).
Some manufacturers of wireless LAN hardware do not want to release any hardware specifications and/or drivers for their products for operating systems other than Microsoft Windows.
The Ndiswrapper project enables to use this hardware with Linux by means of a kernel module that "wraps itself around" the NDIS driver, thus providing support for some Windows network drivers under Linux.
A list of the supported chipsets is available at: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/List
Procedure
Install the package ndiswrapper via YaST2.
Download the manufacturer driver for your card. The above-mentioned web page supported_chipsets.html includes some direct links to manufacturer home pages.
We recommend you the use of archives (.zip,.tar.gz), since they can be unpacked in Linux.
The following lines describe the procedure for the network card RTL8180L.
Go to the web page of the manufacturer and save the relevant ZIP archive in the directory /tmp.
Open a text console e.g. by clicking on the icon representing a monitor with a shell in the tool bar on the lower screen border in KDE. Enter the following command in the displayed window:
su -
Enter root's password when prompted to do so. Note that no output is displayed on the screen when typing the password.
Unpack the file with the command:
unzip -d driver /tmp/winxp-8180\(168\).zip
Note: The back slashes (\) in the file name must be entered manually in order to mask the brackets. As an alternative, you can use the extension with TAB so that the file name is automatically completed.
A new subdirectory (/tmp/driver) is created when unpacking the file. This subdirectory contains the file .INF required by Ndiswrapper.
Proceed to install the driver by entering the path to the file INF (ndiswrapper -i /PATH_TO_FILE/NET8180.INF). In this example:
ndiswrapper -i /tmp/driver/NET8180.INF
The output displayed should be similar to:
Installing net8180
Check if the driver has been properly installed with the command:
ndiswrapper -l
If this is the case, the following output will be displayed:
Installed ndis drivers: net8180
Load the module with the command:
modprobe ndiswrapper
If the command does not return any error messages, the driver has been successfully loaded. The output of the command dmesg displays additional information:
ndiswrapper version 0.6+CVS loaded ndiswrapper adding rtl8180.sys
Once the driver is loaded, the WLAN interface must be configured.
For this purpose, proceed as described in the article http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/11/wavelan.html
Information
If everything works, you can enter the following command to load the module when the system starts:
ndiswrapper -m
Please note that the use and installation of ndiswrapper as well as any problems derived from it exceed the scope of the free-of-charge installation support.
Disclaimer
The origin of this information may be internal or external to Novell. While Novell makes all reasonable efforts to verify this information, Novell does not make explicit or implied claims to its validity.