Upgrading wireless for ubuntu edgy

October 27, 2006

I upgraded my laptop from kubuntu dapper to kubuntu edgy last night. The problem I ran in to was with the wireless setup - my system wouldn’t work wirelessly after the upgrade. The *odd* thing was/is that I reboot once, and the wireless worked that time, but then didn’t work again after another reboot (really!).

So, long story short, here’s what I found and what you’ll need to do if you’re having the same problem:

Use kernel-2.6.17-10 - install the kernel, and install the linux-headers-generic package.

Go grab ndiswrapper from sourceforge, then compile that by hand. (I used 1.27 and it worked).

Compile ndiswrapper as normal, and configure as normal.

The problem I was running in to was the upgrade didn’t give me 2.6.17 off the bat - I still had a 2.6.15 kernel, which was compiled with gcc 4.0 (I think). To be honest, I lost track of a couple things last night, but by tonight I’d realized the big issue with ndiswrapper not working was that edgy now gives you gcc-4.1, but my older kernel was compiled with 4.0, and my previous ndiswrapper was compiled with gcc-4.0. I think because much of the rest of the system (the libc stuff) was compiled with 4.1, things weren’t working.

Upgrading to kernel 2.6.17 (compiled with gcc 4.1.2) and compiling ndiswrapper by hand (with gcc-4.1) worked. apt-get installing the ndiswrapper packages from the repositories did not work, and frankly never has for me - I’m not even sure why they’re there. I only ever read about people having trouble with them…

If you have trouble with your ubuntu wireless, drop me a line here or at mgkimsal@gmail.com and I’ll give a shot at helping you, although I’m certainly no expert at this stuff…