This installation was performed on a Dell Inspiron 8000 running Fedora Core 2 (linux 2.6.7-1.494.2.2) using ndiswrapper-0.9, but I hope the procedure is general enough to be of some value to others. The first step was to obtain the kernel source code, this was accomplished via yum:
yum install kernel-sourcecode
It turns out in several Fedora kernels there is a kernel option which can cause problems, CONFIG_4KSTACKS. I recovered the kernel config by issuing a "make oldconfig" then checked ".config" to make sure the CONFIG_4KSTACKS option was not selected. For my particular choice of kernel it was not, but if it is selected you will need to rebuild your kernel.
Next, download and unpack the ndiswrapper package and install the utilities as root: "make; make install"
Attempt to load your windows driver, for me "ndiswrapper -i /mnt/cdrom/lsbcmnds.inf" did the trick. Issue a "ndiswrapper -l" and make sure the program does recognize your card as present. Next, issue a modprobe ndiswrapper to load the relevant kernel module and follow with iwconfig to see if your card is present.
So far so good, next I ran "gnome-network-preferences", selected the configure option then setup a dummy wireless card on eth1 (pick any wireless driver) but used the proper ESSID, channel number and gateway. This should create the script "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1". Copy this file to "ifcfg-wlan0" and edit this file, changing the interface from eth1 to wlan0 and modify any other details to match your system. At this point I issued a "/sbin/ifup wlan0" and everything worked (after about 20 tries of screwing with card settings).
For load on startup, all I did was add one line to /etc/modprobe.conf: "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" -- and somehow everything worked on next startup. It seems to me the ifup command somehow instructs the system which interfaces to load on startup as well as doing a host of other things... Read the ndiswrapper "INSTALL" instructures, they are very good altho I my /lib/modules/../build directory was *not* linked to the kernel source.
Cheers, Jeff
