MaconMacGuy.com:

Putting the tech pieces together
for Macon & Middle Georgia
for "a good while now"

I’ve been putting together an Ubuntu system for my parents, who just setup internet access at their house. Sadly they will be using wireless at the house (more on my opinion of wireless in another article), so I had to pickup a PCI wireless card for the machine [the motherboard is an Acer with a P4 1.6Ghz processor & a gig of ram.]

It’s been interesting trolling the ‘net for installation instructions – I’ve seen conflicting reports on the process, and nothing that specifically mentioned Ubuntu 10.10.

So here – for the sake of others and myself – is how I got Ubuntu 10.10 to work with a Netgear WG311 PCI wireless access card:

What you’ll need:

1. A working Ubuntu 10.10 system
2. Admin access (i.e. your admin password)
3. Internet Access – and all the passwords and such to access the home network
4. A Netgear WG311 PCI card already installed into the machine

The Process:

1. Start the machine running. Login. Get to the desktop.
2. Start a console (Applications–>Accessories–>Terminal)
3. Type this:  lspci | grep Marvell
   
4. You should see something like this showup:
   Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8835 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)
   (As long as you see something related to “Marvell” you are OK. Your screen will likely look somewhat different)
5. Get the drivers from either
   ftp://downloads.netgear.com/files/wg311v3_1_0.zip or
   http://www.soft32.com/Download/Free/NETGEAR_WG311v3_80211g_Wireless_PCI_Adapter/4-181522-1.html or
   possibly http://www.marvell.com/drivers/upload/MV-S800374-00.zip
6. Open up the “Downloads” folder (Places–>Downloads).
   Doubleclick the zip archive you see there to unpack the archive.
7. Fire up the Synaptic Package Manager (System–>Administration–>Synaptic Package Manager).
   Search for “ndiswrapper”.
   Install ndisgtk, ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 and ndiswrapper-common.
8. Back at the console/terminal, type this:
   ndiswrapper -h.
   If you get a reply with some help text, that means ndiswrapper is indeed installed. If it isn’t, redo Step 6.
9. Switch back to your open downloads folder.
   Open up the folder you extracted back in step 5.
   You’ll see several folders there – find the WinXP folder inside the Driver folder and open it.
10. Set your screen – i.e. move the windows around -  so you can see both the console and the contents of the WinXP folder at the same time.
11. In the console type this:
    sudo ndiswrapper -i
    -make sure you leave a space at the end of the line, and DON’T HIT ENTER YET
12. Switch to the WinXP folder.
    Click and drag the file WG311v3.INF into the console.
    Let go of the mouse button when your pointer reaches the end of the line you typed in step 11.
    The line should end with the full path of the .INF file. Hit enter now.
13. Type ndiswrapper -l.
    The console should reply:
    wg311v3 : driver installed,  device (11AB:1FAA) present
    
14. If that doesn’t work, try typing this: 
    ndiswrapper -a devid wg311v3.
    [Replace "devid" with the PCI ID or the USB ID of your card, in the form XXXX:XXXX.
    To get those numbers, run the command lspci -n or lspci -nn (for PCI cards, the -nn option adds a human readable device name so you can easily identify the device your are targeting) or the command lsusb (for USB devices]
15. Now you have to insert the software module into the system. Type this:
    sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
    
16. Check to see if it worked by typing this command:
    iwconfig
    You should see a reference to “wlan0” in the output. If you do, it’s working!
17. Now add it to the list of things to automatically startup by typing this command:
    sudo ndiswrapper -m
18. …and then type this:
    sudo gedit /etc/modules
    [gedit is a text editor- you could also use pico or any other text editor you have available in your system.]
    Add a line that says ndiswrapper
    Hit CTRL-X to write the file.
    Exit your text editor.

That should do the trick! I suggest shutting down the system and then restarting, just because I like to make sure things are working – and will continue to work after I’ve gone back home!

Sources for more help:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/Netgear_WG311_v3

http://madwifi.org/

http://switch2linuxnow.com/home/netgear-wg311-ver-3-wireless-network-cards

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-5141.html

http://www.linux-wireless.org/Drivers/

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/marvell-88w8335-chipset-netgear-wg311-pcicard-driver/

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-9300639326172081%3Ac6lzq8-dhwz&ie=UTF-8&sa=Search&q=NEtgear+WG311+linux+driver&hl=en-+

I just installed Ubuntu 10.0.4 [Lucid Lynx] on a vintage 2000 Apple iMac DV [Blueberry color]. There is a ton of old information about how to do this on the web, but most of it relates to Ubuntu 6 or earlier.

The primary issue is that Ubuntu out of the box doesn’t talk to the internal monitor correctly. The monitor is limited in terms of refresh rates and screen resolution – granted, it was fairly advanced for it’s time, but time moves on.

First, some links:

• Ubuntu PowerPc Downloads page
• Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ
• Mac-Linux site – has a PowerPC wiki that is useful, not much Ubuntu info, though

Here is the procedure to install Ubuntu onto an iMac DV:

1. Download/create an Ubuntu PPC live cd. See links above.

2. Turn the machine on, pop the CD into the slot, and hold the C key until you see type on the screen.  The C key makes the machine to boot off the CD.

3. Once you get some type on the screen and the machine is waiting for a response, type this:
live video=ofonly
Hit enter

4. It will take several minutes for the machine to boot, and the screen will flash a few times. At some point you will see a warning dialog box telling you that ubuntu is running in “Low Graphics mode”. Click the OK button.

5. Then you will see a selection box – select “Exit to Console login” and click the OK button.

====
I would think the odds are good that someone on the planet trying this would actually get lucky and Ubuntu would finish booting. In that case, once everything is up – it will take a while! – switch to console mode

To switch to Console mode -> Press Ctrl + Alt + F1

You’ll need to kill gdm and X at this point. Some sites have said the command to do this is
killall gdm

Other sites said that wouldn’t work.
====

6. In either case, at the command line, type this:
lspci | grep Rage

Write down what you see there.

The lspci command gives a ton of system hardware information. The | part “pipes” the information into another program, grep, which prints to the screen any lines with the word “Rage”, which is the video card used in this model.

7. Then type:
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

You are going to create a configuration file [named xorg.conf that will be stashed in the  etc/X11 directory] that will tell the GUI how to talk to the internal monitor.

8. Type this:

Section “Device”
VendorName “****” <- the vendor from the lspci command
BoardName “*****” <- the card from the lspci command
BusID “*****” <- the RIGHTMOST three numbers at the beginning of the info from the lspci command
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Generic Monitor”
Option “DPMS”
HorizSync 60-60
VertRefresh 43-117
EndSection

=====

For example, for my iMac the lspci command returned
00000:00:10.0 Ati Technologies Inc Rage 128 PR/PRO AGP 4x TMDS

VendorName “Ati Technologies Inc”
BoardName “Rage 128 PR/PRO AGP 4x TMDS”
BusID “00.10.0″

=====

9. Hit CTRL-O to write the file

10. CTRL-X to exit from nano

11: Then give this command:
sudo startx

You should see the desktop popup onto the internal monitor – but it WILL take some time.

12. Now you are ready to install Ubuntu onto the internal hard drive.  There is a command to “Install Ubuntu” – it will either be on the desktop, or inside either the System or Administration menus. Find it, select it, and follow the prompts.

The internal drive on my machine is only 10gig, so I opted to wipe the hard drive and put Ubuntu on the entire drive – goodbye OS X 10.2 and MacOS 9.2.2!  After all of the updates have been installed I still have about 40% of the drive still available.

Using Mac OS 10.2 the machine was barely usable for even basic web work (email etc). I’ve found the speed under Ubuntu to make the machine useful again for a variety of tasks, especially anything office-related.

===

Tom Rule
the MaconMacGuy
MaconMacGuy.com
MidGaHosting.com

I’ve had a few clients express interest in Linux, especially for their older machines which would be doing real basic computing tasks (web, email, word processing, etc).

Many are afraid to muck around with the standard installation – the idea of messing around with the hard drive, or wiping out their current OS is enough to scare them away.

I’ve begin recommending WUBI to them (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer). Aside from being actually fun to say (try it three times, as fast as you can, while sitting at a traffic light with your car windows down….) it is a non-destructive way to install Linux onto your WIndows machine to see if you like it.

You download and install Wubi, which then takes over the rest of the installation. You do have to give it an amount of the hard drive for it t “take over” – I used 10gig which has been enough for my needs. You’ll also give it an administration username and password – WRITE IT DOWN!

On reboot you’ll see a “Pick which OS you want” menu. Select Ubuntu and the machine will boot in Ubuntu. It’s a full fledged installation, and works MUCH faster on my glacial Athlon 2200+ machine. My rough guess is tasks are about 25-35% faster on this machine under Ubunut compared to Win XP Home.

I can provide training on this, and installation help.

More information:
Wikipedia article on Wubi
The Wubi Installer

The Wubi Guide