Loading Kubuntu 6.10 on a M2N32-SLi Deluxe Wireless Edition system

[jck]

I have a system with this motherboard, which uses the Realtek 8187 wireless chipset.

I have updated the BIOS within the past 90 days.
I have the latest Linux and Windows drivers from Realtek.

I load the OS, all goes well.
Then I load ndiswrapper with my Windows 64-bit driver, it seems to load fine.
Then I load WPA Supplicant, and it seems to do alright.

When I reboot, and I check things:
The ifconfig shows wlan0 present
The iwconfig shows wlan0, but ESSID is "off/any" and my received/sent/quality are all zero
The dmesg buffer shows me lots of "atomic" errors.

Does anyone have suggestions, or a link to a comprehensive set of instructions to get things working?

I am working in several places trying to get help getting this to work.

Once I have this working and know what makes it work, I'd be glad to do an KB article for it.

thanks

jck

[jck]

Re: Loading Kubuntu 6.10 on a M2N32-SLi Deluxe Wireless Edition system

OK...there is good news...

Last Friday night I downloaded and burned the Kubuntu 7.04 Beta 32-bit desktop distro.

I now have my system fully working, with WPA-PSK (WPA Personal) on a 54Mb/s encrypted connection and I'm using the latest Firefox for Linux.

My system uses:

Asus M2N32-SLi Deluxe Wireless Edition Motherboard with the Realtek 8187 chipset

Things you need to know/have before starting this process:
- Your router's ESSID
- Your router's MAC Address on your local network
- The channel your router is using
- Your original Asus motherboard CD

I will try and step you through this. Due to differences in hardware for network cards, wireless routers, etc., in different parts of the world, I can't guarantee that this will work for everyone. I am not a Linux guru, so I probably can't answer all the questions folks might pose. I hope this helps some/all of you with the same motherboard that I have.

Steps:

1) Download and burn a CD for the 7.04 Beta Desktop distro released 23 March 2007

2) Download and burn a CD for the 7.04 Beta Alternate distro released 23 March 2007

3) Go through the installer for 7.04 Desktop distro

4) Reboot into 7.04 Desktop from disk drive

5) Blacklist the built-in driver by editing /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add the following line to the bottom:

blacklist rtl8187

then save the modification and exit your editor

6) Insert the 7.04 Alternate CD into your CD drive

7) Cancel any default actions the operating system wants to assign to the CD

8 ) Start Adept (Menu->System->Adept Manager in Kubuntu) and do Manage Repositories option under the View menu

9) In the Software Sources window, choose the 2nd tab labelled Third-Party Software and click the Add CD-Rom... button at the bottom.

10) Adept should load the repositories that are on the Alternate Distro CD, then ask you to Update your repositories list.

11) When your list refreshes, scroll down and find ndiswrapper-utils-1.9, choose to Request Install, then click the Apply Changes button to install ndiswrapper.

12) Once you have ndiswrapper on your system, exit Adept.

13) Eject your 7.04 Alternate CD, and insert your Asus motherboard CD. Cancel any defaults that the Operating System wants to assign.

14) When it mounts and displays on your desktop, right click and Open the CD.

15) Navigate to the Drivers/Wifi/WIN98 directory, and copy the Netrtuw.inf and RTL8187.sys files.

16) Navigate to your home directory and paste the files there.

17) Open a terminal window.

18 ) At the terminal window, do the following:

ndiswrapper -l

You should have no drivers loaded

sudo ndiswrapper -i Netrtuw.inf

This should load the driver into ndiswrapper

sudo ndiswrapper -m

You might see some kind of message...but...it didn't affect me.

sudo depmod -a

This should work fine too.

19) Now, restart your install.

20) Once you have 7.04 up, login.

21) Open a terminal window.

22) Type ifconfig and confirm that "wlan0" is there. It should be.

23) Type iwconfig and confirm "wlan0" is there too. Mine was there, but it had no ESSID, no AP Association, and the channel/frequency was wrong.

24) Type the following commands to setup your wlan0:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid <your router's ESSID>
sudo iwconfig wlan0 ap <your router's MAC Address>
sudo iwconfig wlan0 channel <your router's channel>

25) Type iwconfig again and look at wlan0. You should now be getting signal strength and what not. At least, I did.

25) If the previous step worked, then do this: On your taskbar, go to the KNetworkManager icon, right click it, and choose your local wireless network. This should have the same name as your ESSID.

26) At this point, it should recognize your network and the proper encryption. If you click the wireless network item inside Network Manager, you should have a place to enter your WPA password the first time you do. Enter the ASCII password and click Apply.

Wait and watch...my network came up...and...I am typing this article from my Firefox 2.0.0.2 browser in Kubuntu 7.04 Beta using WPA-PSK.

I also went ahead and did a /etc/networking/interfaces file from Wieman's examples at the article on the Ubuntu forums
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=318539

Don't know if it helps, but it might stabilize your connection

I will try to answer questions as I can.

Hopefully, you will be able to get 64-bit compatibility to work with this motherboard/wireless chipset in the near future.

As for now though, I am just happy to have Linux working in dual boot with my system...and I am free.

Thanks to Kubuntu, I am now moving into the real of freedom called Linux.

Cheers

jck