kernel module placement Q:

[Claude Jones]

On Mon April 17 2006 9:25 am, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Now, I found those drivers, but after
> copying them to /lib/firmware, and installing them, ndiswrapper -l
> shows this:
>
> [root at diablo yum.repos.d]# ndiswrapper -l
> Installed drivers:
> bcmw15   invalid driver!
>

Well, I can't guarantee that you require the same drivers that I use. We do 
have different BCM nics according to lspci. Here's where you'll have to hunt 
around, research things...

> So:
> [root at diablo WLAN]# ndiswrapper -e bcmw15
> [root at diablo WLAN]# cd /lib/firmware
> [root at diablo firmware]# ls
> bcmwl5.inf  bcmwl5.PNF  bcmwl5.sys
> [root at diablo firmware]# ndiswrapper -i bcmw15.inf
> Installing bcmw15
> couldn't copy bcmw15.inf at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 139.
> [root at diablo firmware]#
>
> I've repeated that several times, even with a full path & with & without
> the .inf appended.
>
> No install due to the above can't copy error.  An ls -l shows:
> -r-------- 1 root root 658896 Nov 28 04:35 bcmwl5.inf
>
> So I moved it by hand, but that didn't change anything.  I didn't really
> expect it to, but...
>

As I mentioned before, I got this going under MEPIS and PCLINUXOS, not Fedora, 
so I have no experience configuring NDISwrapper. In one instance, it was all 
done by the installation process. MEPIS just came up after install, and the 
wireless nic just worked. In PCLINUXOS, they have a GUI based installation 
process to add a wireless NIC and configure it with NDISwrapper,  that makes 
it very simple. Hopefully, someone who's done this in Fedora will chime in, 
to help you at this stage.

> And of course kwifimanager is still deader than last weeks news.
>
> Whats in your wallet? /etc/ndiswrapper that is :)
>
> Mine now shows an empty subdir named /etc/nbdiswrapper/bcm15
>

Mine's not empty. It has the bcmlw5.inf and bcmlw5.sys files in it, plus a 
bunch of configuration files that start with "14E4:4301" and end 
with ".conf", with other characters spaced between.

> I have an SP30676.exe file which is supposed to be a 32 bit driver,
> worked on a gentoo 32 bit system
>
> Anybody else with a clueby4 here, please chime in.

Hopefully, someone will - I think you're very close...

By the way, I recall that in my folder where I found the drivers, there were 
several different files that appeared to have .inf and .sys extensions, and I 
had to try a couple of different ones to get the right one. 
-- 
Claude Jones
Bluemont, VA, USA