wlan0 device not present FC5 x86_64

[David G. Miller]

Toad <keepertoad at verizon.net> wrote:

>Unable to get ndiswrapper to work on 64 bit kernel.  Works a treat on
>smp kernels.
>
>lspci shows hardware present.
>	05:06.0 Network controller: RaLink Ralink RT2500 802.11G
>Cardbus/mini-PCI (rev 01)
>
>lsmod shows ndiswrapper.ko loaded.
>
>ndiswrapper shows hardware present:	
>[keepertoad at office ~]$ ndiswrapper -l
>Installed drivers:
>rt2500          driver installed, hardware present
>
>Driver used is w2k/xp 32 bit.  WinXP 64 bit driver results in hard lock
>requiring hardware reset.
>
>service network restart responds with "wlan0 not present delaying...."
>
>ifcfg-wlan0 is identical to known good config for smp kernels.  Have
>tried several versions of ndiswrapper including 1.15 with same result.
>
>Have tried 2054 and 2096 64 bit kernels with same result.
>
>FWIW, CentOS 4.3 64 bit kernels give same result.  Yet, it works without
>a hitch on 32 bit kernels and 32 bit smp kernels.
>
>Would appreciate any suggestions.  Have Googled for hours without
>finding anything productive.  Thanks in advance.
>
>bj
>
>Fedora Core 5, Linux 2.6.16-1.2111_FC5smp athlon 14:31:12 up 4 min, 2
>users, load average: 0.49, 0.85, 0.41
>
Bad news.  Your choices are:

1) Run a 32-bit version of FC and hope the Windoze 32 bit driver works.
2) Figure out how to make the 64 bit Windoze driver work with FC 64 bit.
3) Try to find a native Linux driver that works with your existing 
wireless NIC.
4) Looks like its a mini-PCI card so you could try a different NIC by 
swapping cards.

I'm running FC4 64bit on an HP laptop and did a bunch of digging last 
summer when I was attempting to make that combination work.  The Windoze 
driver must match the word size of the Linux kernel for ndiswrapper to 
work (both 32 bit or both 64 bit).  Could be things have changed since 
then but I doubt it.  You might want to look around for a different 
version of the Windoze driver (e.g., if this is a laptop, from the 
laptop manufacturer) or, conversely, a plain vanilla driver from the 
card manufacturer and see if it makes any difference.

Cheers,
Dave


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