After a gruelling fortnight of exams, I finally have some peace of mind to enjoy with :-). But at the end of the exams I ended up with something really good & worthwhile. I have been accepted as a Fedora Ambassador of my region (Durgapur, WB, India). That also entails with all good responsibility of representing and promoting FedoraProject.
View my profile: [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ArindamGhosh]
Many vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a Linux driver for their wireless network cards. The ndiswrapper project implements Windows kernel API and NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification) API within Linux kernel. A Windows driver for wireless network card is then linked to this implementation so that the driver runs natively, as though it is in Windows, without binary emulation. With ndiswrapper, most miniPCI (builtin), PCI, PCMCIA (Cardbus only) or USB wireless network cards work in Linux with x86 or x86-64. Although ndiswrapper is intended for wireless network cards, other devices are known to work: e.g., ethernet cards, USB to serial port device, home phone network device etc.
I got into this matter because one of my friend bought a Compaq Pressario V6425TU laptop but the Wifi (wlan vendor: Broadcom) won’t work in F7.
URL: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/
The latest stable version is 1.48. It can also be yum-installed from livna repository.
Usage: First we have to install ndiswrapper kernel module (from livna):
# yum install ndiswrapper
Then we check whether any conflicting driver is there or not. If present it should be blacklisted. To do this (replace ‘driver’ with driver name say ‘bcm43xx’):
# echo 'blacklist driver' | \
tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Now for PCI wireless adapter do a # lspci -n or for USB wireless adapter do # lsusb. Once the wifi card is identified, note down the chipset ID of the form 104c:8400. Then we install the crap…the INF file (eg: bcm43xx.inf) of the Windows driver
# ndiswrapper -i /path to/driver.inf
To make sure if the driver is properly installed we list the currently installed drivers for ndiswrapper:
# ndiswrapper -l
If the driver is properly installed it will echo:
Installed ndis drivers:
{driver} driver present, hardware present
If you don’t see this, try a different driver such as the drivers for Windows 2000, or another driver matching the PCI ID on the ndiswrapper list. The installation of driver can be done easily by a GUI ndisgtk.
After installation, now we run the following commands to add the driver module in kernel:
# depmod -a
# modprobe ndiswrapper
Now with # ifconfig or # iwconfig the wifi card will appear with an interface name like wlan0. If wlan0 is shown then wifi is working!! We can then create a network connection.
I completed packaging Sirius - Othello game for GNOME. I have out up a review request in Bugzilla. Bug id is #287801. Sirius is a program for playing the game of othello. The program includes an AI (Artificial Intelligence) opponent which plays at a very challenging level and is actually quite hard to beat. The AI opponent’s strength can therefore be adjusted in several ways to give you a suitable opponent. I would like to have a sponser for this so that i can get it into the Fedora repository. The spec file and the SRPM are over here:
[http://makghosh.googlepages.com]
Now i am also facing a problem while doing “ssh -v makghosh [at] fedorapeople [dot] org”. I could not access the server. And what is GSS failure…Please help!! The debuginfo is given here:
[http://makghosh.googlepages.com/sshDebugInfo.txt]
Update: The issue mentioned above is resolved. It’s a mere bandwidth problem. The poor airtel gprs connection was unable to do an ssh. Now, that i have got the BSNL Dataone Broadband connection…life has become quite easy!! Anyways, two of my packages for Fedora are:
Planet Fedora Planet dgplug