Re: ndiswrapper configs

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 20:09, Zackary Deems wrote:
> Great.. is this ALL configs supported by ndiswrapper?

No, ndiswrapper supports virtually any network card, both wireless and normal. 
I've packaged the ones I could verify to work (meaning anything that is in 
any hardware I have access to that isn't supported natively), and I think 
this covers most chipsets, but certainly not all.

> Do we have it 
> documented someplace that these exist, so people will know they CAN
> install them like that?

If you know where to look ;)
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/List

Search the page for "Ark Linux" and you'll find a couple of references.
We need to document it better though, preferrably by just doing the right 
thing automatically (see below)

> Is there some way we can do it automagically if 
> we see that hardware on the system?

Not yet, but I've thought about it too. The basic idea would be to add another 
(optional) field to /usr/share/hwdata/pcitable, specifying the package[s] 
containing a driver.
Then coldplug and hotplug must be patched to handle it -- problems that need 
to be solved before that can be done:
- Must add and parse the extra field to pcitable
- coldplug/hotplug must have a way to trigger an action when the a privileged
  user logs in (in GUI mode) for the first time after new hardware was
  detected -- we need to be able to prompt the user for things to do if we
  can't determine it automatically (e.g. do we download a wireless driver
  because the chip is there, even if the user is on a slow pay-per-minute
  connection and doesn't want to use the wireless chip in his notebook
  anyway?)

This is definitely something we should do, and once done, we can also use it 
to trim down the default install (there's not really a need to include 230 
sound drivers in the core kernel package if there's an easy and 100% 
automated way to install the one(s) you need...).

I'll look into it.

LLaP
bero