Configuring A Belkin F5d6050 802.11b Usb Wifi Device On Mandriva 2007 Using Ndiswrapper A step-by-step tutorial.

[yordan 10]

The Belkin F5D6050 802.11b USB wifi device is sold with itâs Microsoft Windows auto-installing driver package. Letâs suppose that you are installing a dual-boot system, and that the windows installation allowed you to verify that your usb device is fullty functionnal and is able to discover your wifi access point and connect to the internet.
Then, you installed Linux Mandriva 2007, and you have to configure the Linux wifi device.



1. CONFIGURING THE LINUX WIFI DEVICE



Now your system is booted under Mandriva 2007 Linux, and you have no wifi device because you did not install the driver yet.
Letâs suppose that you obtained the driver as you were priviously booted under Windows, and that the driver is available on a CD-ROM or on any other removable device or Linux-mounted NTFS partition.
Now, in order to install the device driver, proceed like follows :
Go to the KDE main Menu, and then
Choose Configuration
Choose Configure your computer
(you will have to provide the root password in order to continue)
Choose Mandriva Linux control Center
Choose Network and Internet
Choose âConfigure a new internet connection (LAN, ISDN, ADSL, Wifi)
Choose âUse Windows Drivers using NDISwrapperâ
(You will probably have to add you Linux Distro CD)
When prompted, choose the driver you previously obtained
The GUI will automatically recognize the available access point, choose yours, it will be configured automatically and you will be able to surf over the Internet.



2. OBTAINING THE NDISWRAPPER DRIVER



Before that, obtaining the Windows driver in a format accepted by ndiswrapper is sometimes a little bit tricky.

As explained in the  ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php url (this address is provided by theLinux installer itself) , first of all, download the driver from  belkin.com/us/support
Then, you can see that the sourceforge site explains :

Download the driver. Extract to a new directory using unzip. Extract the CAB files (DATA1.CAB, DATA1.HDR, DATA2.CAB) using "unshield x" . cd Drivers/WINXP . edit bkusb.in_ and uncomment the CopyFile.XP.Sys section. Run ndiswrapper -i bkusb.in_ as root followed by ndiswrapper -m . modprobe ndiswrapper. ifdown wlan0. ifup wlan0 and you are there.

Once you have already done this, itâs rather simple. However, the first time you have to do it, it has to be commented. By the way, only the first three lines have to be performed, the rest of the install will be done using the GUI.
Of course, you first have todownload the driver.
The ârealâ part of the driver is simply two files, a binary .sys file and a text .inf file. Unfortunately, these files are not simply visible when unpacking the driver. The files are embedded in the .cab and .hdr files. And standard Windows commands cannot extract the files, because they are embedded in the installshield cab files. But the unix âunshieldâ command can perform this.
So, the solution is simple. You first have to install the unshield rpm in your Linux system. The unshield rpm should be on your Linux distro CDâs, otherwise get it from the internet âeasy urpmiâ or rpmfinder.
Then, use the âunshield Xâ command to extract the files from data1.cab, then from data1.hdr and from data2.cab.
The work is now almost finisthed. You have to modify the bkusb.in_ file, in order to uncomment the CopyFile.XP.Sys section
Now the job is done, go to the first part of this tutorial and use the GUI in order to configure the usb wifi adapter using the ndiswrapper drivers you have just obtained.




3. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.




Itâs rather easy to install and configure the Belkin F5D6050 802.11b USB wifi device on Mandriva 2007 provided that you have the Windows driver (two files). If you are lucky and find the drivers ready-made from Internet or from another computer, you just have to startup the Linux network configuration GUI and click in the .inf driver description file.
If you donât directly have the .inf and the .sys parts of the driver, it seems complicated the first time you do that, but you simply have to unpack the Windows driver in order to extract the .inf and .sys files, before starting the network install.


This is the tutorial I would like to have had when I started this job some weeks ago. I hope it will be helpful.

Regards


Yordan