NetGear WG111V2

[sauny]

Hi Guys,

I have been trying and trying and trying for the last 2 weeks to get my USB wireless dongle working on fc7. I have tried using Ndiswrapper to no avail (I install a driver and get Device present using alternative driver rtl8187).

Even then I cannot bring the interface up using iwconfig or ifconfig. It does sometimes appear in the ifconfig information but just won't do anything!

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! The weird thing is that this dongle is automatically installed when I install UBUNTU but in fc7 or even redhat rhel5 it just won't work!

[sideways]

you need to blacklist the native rtl8187 driver to get it to use ndiswrapper, by adding 'blacklist rtl8187' to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.

Also you may need an 8K or 16K stack kernel (http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/wlan/full/downloads-fc7-kernel-i686.php) to avoid system lockups.

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showpost.php?p=804087&postcount=37

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showpost.php?p=804392&postcount=48

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=157106

Ubuntu uses the native driver, which I found very unstable (Constant dropouts)

[sauny]

Problem is, I have blacklisted the rtl8187 driver but it still says it is using it! What Drivers did you use with NDISwrapper to get it working?

[sideways]

Problem is, I have blacklisted the rtl8187 driver but it still says it is using it! What Drivers did you use with NDISwrapper to get it working?

These ones

[sauny]

sorry to keep asking.... but what version of ndiswrapper?

[sideways]

sorry to keep asking.... but what version of ndiswrapper?

I used ndiswrapper version 1.45 and kernel-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 (recompiled for 8K stacks)

[sauny]

excellent thanks sideways.... will give it a go and let you know!

[sauny]

OK, I can honestly say, it didn't work!

Installed NDiswrapper version 1.45 and used the drivers you used and I got Driver installed, Device Present (Alternative driver: rtl8187) I used rmmod on rtl8187 and blacklisted it then did a modprobe ndiswrapper and received this:

Couldn't load driver Kernel is 64bit but windows driver is not 64 bit. Bad Magic (010B)
ndiswrapper (load_sys_files:216) Couldn't prepare driver net111v2
ndiswrapper (load_wrap_driver:118) Couldn't load driver net111v2.

Any ideas? Any ideas if Netgear do a 64bit driver?????

Thanks

[sideways]

OK, I can honestly say, it didn't work!

Installed NDiswrapper version 1.45 and used the drivers you used and I got Driver installed, Device Present (Alternative driver: rtl8187) I used rmmod on rtl8187 and blacklisted it then did a modprobe ndiswrapper and received this:

Couldn't load driver Kernel is 64bit but windows driver is not 64 bit. Bad Magic (010B)
ndiswrapper (load_sys_files:216) Couldn't prepare driver net111v2
ndiswrapper (load_wrap_driver:118) Couldn't load driver net111v2.

Any ideas? Any ideas if Netgear do a 64bit driver?????

Thanks

Oh dear, you didn't mention 64bit, that's kinda crucial here.

OK, my experience with this adapter in 64bit has not been great, I found it unstable, but maybe things have improved with recent kernels. You need to compile the rtl8187 driver from source (so ensure you have kernel-devel installed)

For recent kernels, a patched version of the driver is necessary, this one from aircrack-ng worked with 2.6.20 kernels for me, don't know if it's still up to date
http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=r8187

There is also an "official" driver available from realtek, but it doesn't compile on kernels >= 2.6.20 http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=1&PFid=1&Level=6&Conn=5&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true#RTL8187L

I could never find a working 64-bit windows driver for use with ndiswrapper, so I think that's not an option in 64bit.

[sauny]

Hi Sideways.... and here was me thinking that 64Bit was better somewhere!

I do indeed have kernel-devel installed. I take it from the RealTek site I would need the RTL8187L drivers? If not where would I be able to find the source in order to compile the Drivers?

Thanks again!

[sauny]

Forget most of that last post... found the source will try and sort it all out when I get home tonight!

[sauny]

OK... WOOHOO finally got my wireless working with the rtl8187 drivers..... seems quite slow though.... loading webpages is painfully slower than in windows!

If anyone knows any better way of getting some speed out of the old beast I would be most obliged!

[chris.abel]

I went into NETWORK DEVICE CONTROL (from APPLICATIONS, then SYSTEM TOOLS), CONFIGURE my wireless device (i only have 1), and then EDIT the device, and then set MTU = 1500. This gave me about a 25% boost for my setup anyway, maybe it can help you. Sometimes it gets reset on me for some reason (!)!) and then I go in, reset it to 1500, reboot, and ka-chow, back to full speed ahead cap'n!

[sideways]

try http://www.speedtest.net/ from both windows and linux, to see if there really is a difference

(You need flash player installed)

also make sure yum-updatesd is not downloading anything in the background