How to install ndiswrapper on Linux

Question

Can someone break it down step by step and tell me how to install ndiswrapper on Linux?

I just can't focus enough to understand what they're telling me to do. Can someone tell me how to do it step by step?

My Answer

1. The Linux kernel must have ndiswrapper support.
You can type "/sbin/modinfo ndiswrapper" to check whether kernel has
ndiswrapper module. If not, install a new kernel with ndiswrapper
support. Most decent Linux distros come with ndiswrapper support.
Otherwise, you have to compile a kernel yourself.

If you're going to compile ndiswrapper yourself, download the latest 2.6 kernel from http://www.kernel.org and ndiswrapper from ndiswrapper sourceforge site. Instruction for compiling and installing kernel and ndiswrapper is included in the tarballs.

2. If you have the ndiswrapper module, chances are you also have the
ndiswrapper tools. If running "ndiswrapper -l" displays "command not
found", install ndiswrapper-utils package in Debian or something
similar in other distros. If you compiled ndiswrapper yourself,
ndiswrapper support binaries are built at the same time.

3. Check if your wireless card or USB dongle is supported by ndiswrapper at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/jooml...
It's helpful to know your wireless device ID. If it's PCI, type "lspci
-nn" and look for numbers like 14E4:4312. If it's USB, lsusb will show
your device ID. Look for your device matching your device ID in the
Wiki. The wiki may also have helpful hints and links to download driver
files. Searching for "14E4:4312 ndiswrapper" at Yahoo! Search for example may give you helpful results.

4. Download and extract Windows driver for your Wireless gadget. If
you're lucky, ndiswrapper Wiki above has links to download Windows
driver. If not, get your driver CD that came with your gadget. If not,
mount your Windows partition and copy the files from
/Windows/System32/Drivers, /Windows/Inf, or
/Windows/System32/DriverStore/FileReposi... You typically need one .INF
file, one or more .SYS files for your device. You can use unzip,
cabextract or unshield to extract drivers from .EXE or .CAB files.

5. Once you extracted and have .INF, .SYS files ready, run "ndiswrapper
-i *.inf" against the INF file. This will copy the driver under
/etc/ndiswrapper folder.

6. Type "ndiswrapper -l" to make sure the driver is correctly installed.

zd1211u : driver installed

device (0ACE:1211) present (alternate driver: zd1211rw)

7. Now it's almost done. Run "modprobe ndiswrapper". iwconfig will
hopefully show your device as wlan0 or similar. Use iwconfig and
ifconfig to manually set up your device for wireless connection. There
may be GUI tools to automatically set up wireless networking for you.
For example:

iwconfig wlan0 key c9f8747de2f73d16816b3f828b restricted

iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys

ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.253 up

route add default gw 192.168.1.1

8. This is optional. In Debian, you can add ndiswrapper into
/etc/modules file to have ndiswrapper automatically loaded at boot time.

Source(s):

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/jooml...