Comprehensive Wifi drivers collection? [Solved]

[halfnote5]

Hi there!

I've just finished sanding off the rough edges on an LMDE XFCE build I'm going to be carrying around with me to my client's offices on a flash drive. I usually boot corrupted systems and use the network to back up all salvageable data before I cart the computer off to fix it.
(Which is ancillary to the point, in that it circumvents the inevitable question "why do you want/need do that?" in response to my following query.)

Is there a comprehensive WIFI/ethernet drivers collection/list I can dump into LMDE so that I can be reasonably sure that any wifi or ethernet cards my clients may have scrounged up will function correctly when I live-boot their system with my USB drive?

I'd like to get my hands on a comprehensive list, so I can pretty much just dump ALL of them in before waapping my OS up into a liveboot ISO. An especially helpful list would be one which marks those drivers that aren't already installed by default in the OS.


Thanks!

[äxl]

Sorry, not filtered or sorted:

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apt-cache search 'firmware|driver' 'wireless|wifi'

[zerozero]

just remember that the broadcom drivers (still very popular specially in laptops) have to be built (it's useless to simple install the pkgs); see this howto viewtopic.php?f=197&t=57056

[halfnote5]

Awesome! Thanks. I'll let you both know how it goes. = )

[halfnote5]

Well, I tried that, and the result is that now when I plug it into a machine with a Broadcom card (specifically a 4321AG) instead of getting a firmware error msg, it doesn't show up at all.

I can see it's going to take a little tweaking, but that was kinda the aim of my original question - I'd like to not have to worry whether the resulting live flash drive will work on a particular, random wifi card. Though the ethernet cards seem to be working great now, in any machine I've tried.

[zerozero]

usually that means that the dkms build failed against the kernel.
i assume that yours is a 32bit install (so it can be more universal for your purposes), if so check if the required kernel headers are installed.

[halfnote5]

Looks like you're quite right about it not building properly, although, I don't think it's a header file error... I've tried updating them and am informed they're already the latest version. I AM getting this error:

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/root/broadcom1/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:388:2: error: unknown field ‘ndo_set_multicast_list’ specified in initializer
/root/broadcom1/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:388:2: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type [enabled by default]
/root/broadcom1/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:388:2: warning: (near initialization for ‘wl_netdev_ops.ndo_validate_addr’) [enabled by default]
make[4]: *** [/root/broadcom1/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [_module_/root/broadcom1] Error 2
make[2]: *** [sub-make] Error 2
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-2-486'
make: *** [all] Error 2


EDIT: Fixed!!!

I went into wl_linux.c and replaced

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.ndo_set_multicast_list = wl_set_multicast_list,

with

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   .ndo_set_rx_mode = wl_set_multicast_list,

as per http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=656600

I'll let you know if it works, but forst I have to run remastersys to get an .iso, load it up on a USB stick, and then get it booted on a comp with a broadcom card. ; )

[halfnote5]

Ooooookay, so that COMPILED, but it doesn't actually do any good in recognizing some of the Broadcom chipsets.

So what I ended up doing (I can hear some of you going "nooo!" right now) is installing ndiswrapper, and loading it up with a small collection of common Broadcom drivers, and then creating a script to modprobe ndiswrapper at bootup.

So it works just fine, and is a good solution for us, since we just need it to work on as many systems as possible. Anyone wanting a clean, compiled Linux-native driver might find it objectionable, but the functionality is there, and it seems to work fine on the test machines. Plus with ndiswrapper, you can pretty much always find a Win32 driver on a manufacturer's site while you're at a client's office.


Thanks for the assistance everyone. I'm marking this as "solved" seeing as how all the non-broadcom libraries are working just fine, and I have a workaround for the rest.

Cheers!

[GilDo]

I am having the same problem you do. I don't know how to write a script or where to put it so the wrapper can load the driver on startup. Do you mind posting the script that you wrote and tell me where to place it so it will run on startup? Big thanks

[halfnote5]

Certainly! First, log into a terminal and use

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su

to put yourself in the proper access level to be doing this, then type the following lines

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apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

(It SHOULD tell you they're already the latest version)

Now, if you want the broadcom drivers I needed, do:

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wget  http://www.weberconsulting.com/winnet-bin/lindistro/broadcom.zip

and unzip that zipfile to a folder (we'll call it "broadcom-inf" here...)

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and after that, load the driver:

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cd broadcom-inf
##You may also have to do:  cd broadcom
## as I zipped the entire folder under Windows, and it'll probably unzip it as its current structure.

ndiswrapper -i [.inf file]

(in this particular driver's case, it'll be bcmwl5.inf) so you would type ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf at the prompt.

Now, go to the init.d directory, get the script, and install it to run:

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cd /etc/init.d
wget http://www.weberconsulting.com/winnet-bin/lindistro/ndiswrapper-startonboot
chmod 577 ndiswrapper-startonboot
update-rc.d ndiswrapper-startonboot defaults
ndiswrapper -m


(Update.rc throws an error - ignore it)

Also, if you'd rather just make the ndiswrapper-startonboot file yourself, rather than downloading it from me, here are its contents:

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#!/bin/sh
###Script to start ndis-wrapper on bootup
modprobe ndiswrapper
echo "Starting ndiswrapper on bootup..."

Reboot, and have fun!
All you have to do to load other Windows drivers is copy their drivers directory to a folder on your Mint Debian machine, and

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ndiswrapper -i [.inf file]
##(and for good measure:)
ndiswrapper -m



Where, of course [.inf file] is the name of the actual driver's .inf file.

[halfnote5]

also, in addition to the NDIS wrapper, for anyone who's not interested in copy/pasting each individual entry from

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apt-cache search 'firmware|driver' 'wireless|wifi'

here's what I wound up with:

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su
apt-get install mintwifi firmware-linux-free linux-wlan-ng  ndisgtk ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-dkms ndiswrapper-source ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 wmaloader xboxdrv atmel-firmware broadcom-sta-common firmware-atheros firmware-brcm80211 firmware-intelwimax firmware-ipw2x00 firmware-iwlwifi firmware-libertas firmware-ralink firmware-realtek zd1211-firmware libertas-firmware acerhk-source broadcom-sta-source madwifi-source madwifi-tools

Of course, for stuff like madwifi, I've had to add to my sources list, and (while I haven't cleaned it up, and yet REALLY need to...) here it is so you can comfortably download all the packages:

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deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free
deb-src  http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ sid-wx main
deb-src  http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ squeeze-wx main
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org stable main non-free
deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/
deb-src http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ source/
deb ftp://ftp.au.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ squeeze-wx main
deb http://www.jenslody.de/ any release
deb http://www.remastersys.com/repository squeeze/
deb http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/repository squeeze/
deb ftp://debian.marlow.dk/ sid madwifi
deb-src ftp://debian.marlow.dk/ sid madwifi

[GilDo]

Thank you for your help and time! Got it working now