Giving up on Linux wireless with the Airlink 101 AWLL3028
Even though I found very specific instructions for making the Airlink 101 AWLL3028 USB wireless adapter work with Linux using ndiswrapper, I've pretty much given up.
In all cases, I can get the wireless adapter to light up, and I can find a wireless network. I just can't get a DHCP connection started.
Doing the instructions in Ubuntu was fairly straightforward. But since I don't have an Ubuntu install anywhere but this WiFi-free office, I couldn't test it.
So I did the procedure on my laptop in Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 and in Puppy Linux 3.00. The easiest configuration was in Puppy, which makes using ndiswrapper almost a pleasure. In both cases, I can find the wireless network but can't get a DHCP connection to work.
Configuring ndiswrapper (the open-source program that uses Windows drivers to make hardware work in Linux), I used the Windows XP, 2000 and 98 drivers, all of which worked equally poorly.
In my experience, newer wireless adapters are a bitch to get configured in Linux, whereas older adapters like my Orinoco WaveLAN Silver pretty much configure themselves.
As far as the Airlink AWLL3028, I don't have enough skill or patience to keep going with it. It's disappointing, but that's the breaks.
I was steered by a reader to this Linux Questions page, which lists many networking cards (wired and wireless) and how well they perform under Linux. But for newer cards, I think the best resource is the comments at Newegg, where there are many Linux users to weigh on on whether or not something works.
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First do lsusb to get the device id of the form "####:####". Google on that number with the word linux to find the best driver set for it.
Some wlan adapter have two .inf files so be sure that both are installed and you have a device listed when you check "ndiswrapper -l" My Netgear wg111t looks like this:
"ndiswrapper -l
athfmwdl : driver installed
device (1385:4251) present
netwg11t : driver installed"
Check your /etc/network/interfaces file for a line that looks like this:"iface wlan0 inet dhcp".
the wlan0 line needs to have the "dhcp"
once added, ifdown wlan#
ifup wlan# and you should get a wlan connection if you have an access point in range.
Good luck. I had previously given up on this netgear wifi dongle but recently got it going.
So, there was a compelling, irresistible reason to use a wireless interface that is not supported in Linux? Why put yourself through the pain of using unsupported devices? That's bad procedure on any platform.
Have you tried setting a static IP address just for the sake of seeing if your adapter can connect with the network?
If a static IP gives you network access, perhaps you could then try sudo dhclient to see if that script will get you an IP address.
I'll go and send a "give us Linux drivers or help to get a driver built" to the mfgr. I'll also digg this to try and get more people looking at it.
Go Linux!
Shannon V.
To get an IP address via dhcp open a terminal, su to the root account and type "dhclient"
The following man pages may be able to help you.
man dhclient
man dhcpd
man dhcpd.conf
Is there an error which states why dhcp won't work. And are you sure the DHCP server has enough free addresses and is allocating correctly?
@Matt -- I knew the AWLL3026 was supported, and the AWLL3028 looked exactly the same and, moreover, was only $9. For that price, I was willing to take a chance on it. I figure it will be better supported maybe a year from now.
The problem is that there's too much of a lag between what's in the marketplace today and what's supported in Linux today.
And it doesn't help that the 3026 is a Zydas chipset and the 3028 a Realtek chipset.
I guess you could say my $9 purchase is of a "buy and hold" variety -- meaning they're going to sell enough of these damn things that a year from now, it'll be plug-and-play in the Linux kernel.