Linux help for a wireless usb adapter

[TheCrimsonStar]

I recently installed BackTrack 4 R1 on my desktop, and I also bought a wireless adapter for it so I could try and crack the WEP security on my router. only problem is, BT isn't utilizing the adapter. it sees it, and even lists the company name (belkin) and model number, but i can't get the wireless manager to use it. any help? It's a Belkin F7D1101 Wireless USB Adapter.

 

[Rob Williams]

I haven't used Back Track in a while, so I'm not sure what distro it's based on (if any) or what it would take to get a wireless device working, but the first thing I'd do would be to boot up with the Live CD version and see if you have wireless support at the desktop (you might need to use a program like wpa_supplicant.. I have no idea what tools are available from the get-go). If you do, then that's a good sign... you just need to figure out why it's not working in your regular install.

Out of curiosity, did you simply plug it in and expect it to begin working right away? I'm just not sure of your experience with Linux. A driver (module) is needed, and the good news is that there's a ton of support for Belkin devices in the F5D range, but I'm not sure about F7D. You might be able to use available drivers on the newer device, though.

In the worst case, you could simply try to use ndiswrapper along with the Windows driver to see if you have better luck there. Just be sure to install the drivers suited for XP, since Vista/7 drivers tend to not always agree.

You mentioned that the OS "sees" the adapter, but that doesn't always mean it can use it. I'd recommend loading up a terminal and entering su or sudo and typing in:

lspci -vv

If you're not in an X server, you can view it screen-by-screen by adding " | more " after it, without quotes, or you could output it to a file to review in a slightly easier manner through a text editor. You'd want to look for references of network/wireless adapters, and when you find the Belkin model, see if there is an entry for "Kernel driver in use:" under the blurb. If nothing is there, the OS can't currently use it. If there IS a driver in use, then it's a configuration issue.

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

Yeah I saw all the F5D support, but there wasn't anything about F7D. I tried using Wine to run the installer I downloaded from belkin's website, and I read on another tech help forum that it works, but I keep getting a DLL initialization error and the installation aborts. also for some reason I have the same issue with my DVD drive, it "sees" it but won't show what's on the disc in it (I installed it from disc so this has me puzzled lol)

I then put the driver disk for the adapter into my laptop, pulled the "XP2K" driver folder off of it and transferred it to my BT pc via flash drive, but when I try to run it nothing happens. I heard you can install the .inf files for the driver but I've tried a few different ways and it's not working

*correction*

It is based off of ubuntu

 

[Rob Williams]

I have never considered installing a driver through Wine before, and to be honest, I have no idea how that'd even work. Wine emulates Windows applications, but I am not quite sure how it'd get a piece of hardware to work. If it's possible, then that's news to me, and rather impressive.

Could it just be the disc in your DVD drive that's causing it to not be read? You might want to put another in there and see what happens. I for one know that DVD drives are sketchy at best (I've had many die over the years), but it's rare for one to just not work unless you've been harsh to it. It's not a Linux issue at this point, but more of a hardware issue it seems.

I wish I could be of more help regarding installing the driver through ndiswrapper, but it's been literally five or six years since I last used it. On notebooks, I've been lucky to never have wireless issues, so I haven't had to go and fiddle around with it (good thing too, because as you can tell, it can be complicated).

The best thing I could recommend is A) Seeing if you can copy the BT Live CD to a thumb drive and then boot up with that (there might be an option in the OS itself to do this and B) When searching for solutions, search for it as if you are trying to get it to work in Ubuntu, not Back Track. You'd wind up with far more results that way, and if BT is based on Ubuntu, then the solutions should still work.

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

I already have a live usb boot drive, but the desktop i'm running bt on is an older HP p4 that doesn't support usb boot in the bios. I can boot from disc just fine, and 2 days ago the dvd drive was working perfectly.

I'm kind of a noob to linux so a lot of the terminology and ways to run things confuse me lol. I messed around with opensuse to run a half life 2 deathmatch server for about 2 weeks, now I'm trying BT.

I'll try booting with the live dvd when I get home from college today and see if the wireless works. thanks for your help rob

 

[Rob Williams]

If I'm using strange terminology, just let me know what you want clarified. Given what you're trying to do, I wasn't sure just how well you understood Linux.

That aside, is that a dual-boot system, or does it just have Back Track? If Windows is on there, you could check for the DVD support in there, or at least try to boot up with the Live CD again. If you can't, then there's clearly a hardware issue. I was going to say, "At least DVD-ROMs are cheap", but you'll likely need an IDE, and I'm not quite sure what the availability for those things are like.

Hope you are enjoying your *nix experience though. If you ever want a friendlier one, you might want to try the real Ubuntu at some point. I gotta try BT again soon and see what its capabilities are. Oh, and another thing you might want to do is updating the OS, since that version you have -may- have outdated packages. Again, I'm not sure how that works with BT, but quick Googling should help.

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

I just downloaded BT 4 R1 a couple days ago and it is the new one just released, so it's up to date. and lol the drive I have is an IDE, and if I can't find one on newegg (it it turns out to be the problem), then ebay will have them.

I'm just using BT by itself.

as for the terminology, I found out on my own distro means distribution (ubuntu, gentoo, etc)

what exactly does ndiswrapper do? what is an "X" server and a blurb?

and what do these commands you mentioned do?

lspci -vv

su/sudo

sorry if the questions sound noobish, just delving into linux, don't know much yet.

 

[Rob Williams]

I shouldn't have just assumed that you knew what all of those terms meant. You're using a distro meant for hacking, so I immediately got into the mindset that you might have known all of those terms already

ndiswrapper is a command-line tool that's used to configure a wireless adapter with a Windows driver. It's been so long since I've used it though, so I don't remember anything about using it.

"X" server simply refers to whether or not you have a running desktop environment, like Gnome, KDE or any graphical environment. If you don't have an X server running, it means that all you have is a command-line after the boot (like what servers would use).

By blurb, I simply meant the blurb of text for that piece of hardware. Here's an exact view of what I mean:

07:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio]
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Virtuoso 100 (Xonar Essence STX)
Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 32 (500ns min, 6000ns max)
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
Region 0: I/O ports at ee00
Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
Kernel driver in use: AV200
Kernel modules: snd-virtuoso

There, you can see that my sound card was detected fine by the PC, and it's in use because it's using the snd-virtuoso module (driver).

lspci -vv is a command to query all of the hardware on your PC. So when you run it, you see everything from the lowest-level hardware to things like graphics cards, audio cards, networking cards, et cetera. The reason I wanted you to run it is so that you could find your wireless card in the list, and then see if there is a kernel module in use.

su = super user, and it means that you have 100% full reign over the PC. You're able to delete the entire root folder if you wanted to, so obviously, it should only be used on occasion.

Since BT is based on Ubuntu, you won't have the option to use su though, but rather sudo, which for the most part is the same thing. To enter it, you need to load up a command line (Terminal) and type in "sudo -s" without quotes, and then your password. That will give you root privileges (you can tell because the $ next to your username will become a #), which lspci -vv requires.

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

ah ok thanks I already have root privileges because BT installs default to root without prompting to make an account. So as far as root privileges go I think I'm fine.

 

[TheCrimsonStar]

umm...this is really weird...I installed the ndiswrapper-common, ndiswrapper-utils-1.9, and ndisgtk. The driver installs fine through terminal, BUT when I go to load the driver into memory to make the adapter useable with the "sudo modprobe ndiswrapper" command, it give me this error:

FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found.

Por que??? It's saying ndiswrapper isn't installed, but when I tell terminal to download and install those 3 packages, it says "already at latest version." I'm really confused now

 

[Rob Williams]

I don't think I'll be a ton of use here since I am not familiar enough with ndiswrapper, but if it's indeed a module, you might want to search your computer to make sure that it actually exists and for your proper kernel. First thing is to load up a terminal and type in:

uname -r

Note the version number. Then enter sudo -s and your password and then do:

updatedb

This will take a couple of minutes. Once done, search your PC for prospective kernel modules:

locate ndiswrapper*.o ndiswrapper*.ko

If it returns some values, see if it's installed into the same version source directory as your current Linux kernel. The result would be something like:

/lib64/modules/2.6.35.4/video/nvidia.ko

That's just an example... I have no idea where ndiswrapper would be located. But if it was found there, and the kernel version matched, then it SHOULD work. If you can't find it, you might want to re-install everything related to ndiswrapper, because for some reason your kernel just can't seem to find it. This could lead to a million different possibilities sadly, haha. If worse comes to worse, you might want to post about it at the official BT forums, or even Ubuntu's.

I believe ndiswrapper is a program as well, so try running it in your terminal. If you're not sure where it is, do a "locate ndiswrapper" and see if it's located anywhere under /usr/bin or /usr/sbin or something like it. It could even be under /etc/init.d/. Another option is to type in "ndis" without quotes into your terminal and then hit tab once or twice. If it properly exists, the terminal should auto-complete the term and you could execute it that way.

Sorry you are running into all of these issues man!

 

[Tharic-Nar]

I think that Belkin adapter uses a Broadcom chip (not certain), if it does, good news (in the long run), Broadcom has gone official with linux drivers, and started development, instead of people relying on community developed drivers. It won't help you now, but it might do later (as they will be included in the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 release and possibly other distros later).