Ubuntu:ndiswrapper

From Linux 101, The beginner's guide to all things Linux.

Contents 1 Obtaining Drivers 2 Installing the driver 3 Broadcom 4 Loading the driver

[edit] Obtaining Drivers

One easy way to get the right Windows driver is if you have Windows installed on the computer. First, go to wherever your NTFS partition is mounted. Type

find . -name bcmwl5.inf to locate the driver. Then do

sudo cp path/to/it/bcmwl5.{sys,inf} ~ to copy the driver and inf file to your home directory.

An alternative method is downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website. Sometimes these come in .exe format. Usually you can extract the driver from it simply unzipping the file:

unzip -d driver driver.exe

Copy the bcmwl5.{inf,sys} files out of the directory to your home directory.

[edit] Installing the driver

First, install ndiswrapper-utils. This will require an Internet connection.

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils

Then install the driver you copied over to your home directory:

sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

[edit] Broadcom

If you are using a Broadcom-based card, you will need to block the native driver from loading on start-up. To do this create the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-broadcom and in this file type blacklist bcm43xx.

[edit] Loading the driver

Now you can load the new ndiswrapper driver. Type

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper. To load it every time you boot, add ndiswrapper to the end of the /etc/modules.

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