Guide Using ethernet card in linux with windows drivers

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Read whats in quotes first

1)This works with almost all ethernet cards that have working windows drivers and no linux drivers available.( This tutorial uses silian chipset as example)

2) Use this only if your network card is not detected and you have no native drivers available for it in linux.

I faced the problem of installing Ethernet Card having SC92031 chipset

on linux having kernel 2.6.The linux driver for the card is only avialable

for kernel 2.4 or 2.5.

I got the following message when i did "lspci" :-

Ethernet controller:Unknown device 1904:2031(rev 01)
After searching on the internet I somehow made the card work on my linux

machine.I found that Windows drivers which came with the card can be used on

linux OS using a utility called "ndiswrapper" which is available at

NdisWrapper.

The instructions below explain how to install ndiswrapper and the Ethernet

card drivers.

Prerequisites

==============

You need a recent kernel, at least 2.6.6 or 2.4.26, with header files

for the kernel. Make sure there is a link to the kernel source from

the modules directory. The command

ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build

should have at least 'include' directory and '.config' file.

Downloading

============

Download the latest version of the ndiswrapper sources and

extract it with the command

tar zxvf ndiswrapper-version.tar.gz

This will create ndiswrapper-version directory. Change to that

directory and run

make uninstall

make

Login as root and run

make install

Install Windows driver

======================

If this is the first time you install ndiswrapper, you need to install

Windows driver for Windows XP (in some cases Windows NT or Windows

2000 may also work).

Many Windows drivers are distributed either as zipped files or cab

files. Zipped files, even if they are .exe files, can be extracted

with 'unzip' in Linux; cab files can be extracted with combination of

'cabextract' and 'unshield' programs.

Once the driver has been unpacked, locate .inf and .sys files.In this case

"netslnt.inf" and "slnt.sys"

Using ndiswrapper

=================
Then install the Windows driver with

ndiswrapper -i netslnt.inf

This installs .inf file and required .sys and .bin files. Now, see if

installation of Windows driver is "valid" with

ndiswrapper -l

This should report

"netslnt driver installed"

If not, the Windows driver has not been installed properly.

Now load ndiswrapper module with

modprobe ndiswrapper

Open /etc/modeprobe.conf and add following line:

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

Configure Network

===================

Now open "system-config-network" utility and Add "wireless connection" and

select the "ndiswrapper" device.

After adding the device follow the steps to configure the "wireless

connection" followed by configuring the IP addresses.

After adding the Connection, Activate the connection.

The Ethernet card should work with id wlan0(ifconfig -a).

This works like a charm. I tried on 2 different cards and it worked.:clap: :clap:
 
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