Install Drivers for an unsupported Linux Wireless Network Card

If you are a Linux user you might have run into a problem when you are tyring to get your Windows only wireless network card to work. I have a Fujitsu S-Series Notebook with a Broadcom wireless chip.

At first I decided to use a D-Link PCMCIA card which works fine but I would rather use my internal wireless card.

First you need the ndiswrapper installed on your system which is very easy to do with a rpm based system.
Once installed, get the Windows driver for your wireless network card. You need the inf file.
Now use the command below to install the driver.

Command: ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

Replace bcmwl5.inf with the name of your inf file. You can check if your device has been detected by using ndiswrapper -l.

Command: ndiswrapper -l Installed ndis drivers: bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present

Now we need to load the ndiswrapper module into the kernel.

Command: modprobe ndiswrapper

Now you can check your log file with

Command: dmesg

or try to find an access point in your area with

Command: iwlist wlan0 scan

Now create a file called /etc/wpa_supplicant with the following contents.
network={
ssid="SSID"
proto=WPA
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk="PASSWORD"
}

And connect to the wireless access point with

Command: wpa_supplicant -D ndiswrapper -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Now run

Command: dhcpcd wlan0

to get an IP.

Check out the linux section, I will post a short wireless key management script soon.
Originally Posted by Skylinux @ 2006-03-1 11:12:19