WLAN

To install the Netgear WG111 the following steps are necessary:

• Get the NDIS drivers from the original CD-ROM which comes with the USB stick and copy them to /usr/local/ndis5. In this directory, I have these files:

$ ll /usr/local/ndis5
  total 400
  drwxrwxrwx   2 root root    4096 Oct  5 15:45 .
  drwxrwsr-x  14 root staff   4096 Jan 18 16:48 ..
  -rw-rw-rw-   1 root root    7926 Sep  9 05:54 netwg111.cat
  -rw-rw-rw-   1 root root    6594 Oct  4 09:43 netwg111.inf
  -rw-rw-rw-   1 root root  379488 Sep  9 05:54 wg111nd5.sys

• Get the ndiswrapper package from SourceForge.

$ ndiswrapper -i /usr/local/ndis5/netwg111.inf
$ ndiswrapper -l
$ modprobe ndiswrapper
$ iwlist wlan0 scan
$ iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
$ iwconfig wlan0 key restricted <KEY>
$ iwconfig wlan0 essid <SSID>
$ ifconfig wlan0 up
$ dhclient wlan0

$ ndiswrapper -i /usr/local/ndis5/netwg111.inf
$ ndiswrapper -l
$ modprobe ndiswrapper
$ iwlist wlan0 scan
$ iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
$ ifconfig wlan0 up
$ dhclient wlan0

network={
  ssid=<SSID>
  ­key_mgmt=NONE
  wep_key0=<WEP HEX KEY>
  ­wep_key1=0102030405
  ­wep_key2="1234567890123"
  ­wep_tx_keyidx=0
  ­priority=5
}

network={
  ­ssid="<SSID>"
  ­proto=WPA
  ­key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  ­pairwise=CCMP TKIP
  ­group=CCMP TKIP WEP104 WEP40
  psk="<WPA HEX KEY>"
  ­scan_ssid=0
  ­priority=2
}

When using some WLAN cards (in my case a NetGear WG311v2 PCI card) it's not possible to get a WLAN connection as a regular user without administrator permissions.

Here is my workaround to get regular users back and access to the WLAN.

I added a small batch script to the Autostart folder which starts the WLAN configurator like that:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\runas.exe /user:Administrator /savecred  "C:\Programme\NETGEAR WG311v2 Adapter\wlancfg5.exe"

After this is done, WLAN access is back and running nicely in userspace.

A nice tool to control autostart scripts and all this stuff is Startup Control Panel from http://www.mlin.net/.