# Belkin F7D4101 Wireless USB Adapter not working

## Pikachwuee

Hello fellow Gentoo users!

 I am having a bit of a problem here. I recently moved houses and my wireless router is now located downstairs so I can't have a wired connection for my Gentoo box. I am going to install a connection in my second floor soon but as of right now, I need to wirelessly connect my Gentoo box to my router.

The problem is, I can't get this USB adapter running to work on Gentoo. It obviously works fine on Windows but I have tried most of everything on Gentoo.

I tried ndiswrapper and the driver gets installed successfully along with the detection of the hardware but when I try to load the module it says "Killed". Shortly after I try again, it won't load it, the shell just looks like it's on sleep or something. Nevertheless, I feel like it's a kernel issue.

What are the kernel requirements for ndiswrapper and a wireless connection to begin with? Also, if anyone knows of any generic drivers it will be of great help.

I am completely willing to give any system information if needed.

Thanks~

----------

## DirtyHairy

If ndiswrapper won't work, your only chance is to try and find out which chip is hidden inside the device and whether there are native linux drivers for it.

----------

## Pikachwuee

 *DirtyHairy wrote:*   

> If ndiswrapper won't work, your only chance is to try and find out which chip is hidden inside the device and whether there are native linux drivers for it.

 

What do you mean by chip, like Atheros or something like that?

----------

## DirtyHairy

More like Atheros + chipset ID  :Smile:  See, there is a host of wireless hardware on the market, but most of the manufacturers don't produce the wifi hardware themselves but buy the chipset they put into their products. So, a driver for a specific chipset will in fact drive a number of potentially very differently looking devices from different manufacturers (although the sometimes the driver for the correct chipset may fail because the hardware is wired up in some funky way).

Unfortunately, finding out the chipset is not trivial, as manufacturers have been known to change it sometimes even between revisions of the same hardware. The only definite way to make sure is to open up the device, but that's propably not an option you'd like to take. The other obvious solution is to hope that someone else has already found out and ask google.

If you don't want to do the first and the second fails, your last straw is just enabling all USB wifi devices in th kernel and see what happens in dmesg when you plug it in. If it is supported by one of the drivers (and its USB ID has been recorded there), the driver will claim it, although the initialization may fail due to missing firmware. In this case, just install the firmware and you should be OK. If nothing happens, you're out of luck. Chances are that either the chipset is not supported under linux with the in-kernel drivers (there are some chipset for which no drivers exist at all) or that the USB ID of your device is not known to the correct driver. Unless you are willing to open the thing, that's the end of the road: buy a new one after making sure that it will work with linux, they are not expensive these days.

----------

## Pikachwuee

 *DirtyHairy wrote:*   

> More like Atheros + chipset ID  See, there is a host of wireless hardware on the market, but most of the manufacturers don't produce the wifi hardware themselves but buy the chipset they put into their products. So, a driver for a specific chipset will in fact drive a number of potentially very differently looking devices from different manufacturers (although the sometimes the driver for the correct chipset may fail because the hardware is wired up in some funky way).
> 
> Unfortunately, finding out the chipset is not trivial, as manufacturers have been known to change it sometimes even between revisions of the same hardware. The only definite way to make sure is to open up the device, but that's propably not an option you'd like to take. The other obvious solution is to hope that someone else has already found out and ask google.
> 
> If you don't want to do the first and the second fails, your last straw is just enabling all USB wifi devices in th kernel and see what happens in dmesg when you plug it in. If it is supported by one of the drivers (and its USB ID has been recorded there), the driver will claim it, although the initialization may fail due to missing firmware. In this case, just install the firmware and you should be OK. If nothing happens, you're out of luck. Chances are that either the chipset is not supported under linux with the in-kernel drivers (there are some chipset for which no drivers exist at all) or that the USB ID of your device is not known to the correct driver. Unless you are willing to open the thing, that's the end of the road: buy a new one after making sure that it will work with linux, they are not expensive these days.

 

Ah I understand now. I never did have a lot of experience with wireless networking in Linux since I do all my work wired.

I'm not sure if should open it, I don't want to mess it up and nullify the warranty, haha. After a quick google search, I found a wiki that says the chipset to this specific adapter is Broadcom BCM4323 (and also found this thread on the first page of the google results) but I'm not sure if I should trust it. Regardless, there is no driver for this specific chipset.

I'm thinking of doing what you told me regarding the kernel wireless devices and I don't know how to do that, is there a link to a wiki or a thread that explains how to do it? Also, is this generally safe? As in, not screwing up the kernel and potentially having a broken system.

Thanks for your helpful reply, by the way. ^_^

----------

## DirtyHairy

You're welcome  :Smile:  In menuconfig go to Device Drivers -> Network Devices -> Wireless and activate everything as a module. If you are unsure whether the new kernel will work (no harm should come out of this though), then give it a local version tag (general configuration -> local version) and install it alongside the old one. There is an in-tree driver for several Broadcom chipsets (I am unsure whether it works for yours though), and there is also an official, partially closed-source driver from Broadcom which might support your device --- it's in portage as net-wireless/broadcom-sta.

----------

## Pikachwuee

 *DirtyHairy wrote:*   

> You're welcome  In menuconfig go to Device Drivers -> Network Devices -> Wireless and activate everything as a module. If you are unsure whether the new kernel will work (no harm should come out of this though), then give it a local version tag (general configuration -> local version) and install it alongside the old one. There is an in-tree driver for several Broadcom chipsets (I am unsure whether it works for yours though), and there is also an official, partially closed-source driver from Broadcom which might support your device --- it's in portage as net-wireless/broadcom-sta.

 

Ok I'll try that next time I boot up my computer. Local version assigns a different name for the kernel right? So compiling it with genkernel with the --menuconfig and --bootloader=grub switches will enable me to keep the previous kernel in case something goes wrong?

Since the new kernel is the same, just with a different configuration, I won't have to rebuild my video card drivers nor modules either correct?

One more thing, I can't access the internet from Gentoo so how would I install broadcom-sta?

Pardon my ignorance ;__;

----------

## DirtyHairy

 *Quote:*   

> Ok I'll try that next time I boot up my computer. Local version assigns a different name for the kernel right? So compiling it with genkernel with the --menuconfig and --bootloader=grub switches will enable me to keep the previous kernel in case something goes wrong? 

 

Correct in principle, but as I have never used genkernel (I am doing this kind of stuff by hand), I am not 100% sure.

 *Quote:*   

> Since the new kernel is the same, just with a different configuration, I won't have to rebuild my video card drivers nor modules either correct?

 

Nope, as the module go into /lib/module/[kernel version], you'll have to rebuild them after booting the new kernel. Note, however, that this won't affect your other kernels. Just remember to (at least temporarily) change the /usr/src/linux symlink as some of the ebuilds might rely on it.

 *Quote:*   

> One more thing, I can't access the internet from Gentoo so how would I install broadcom-sta? 

 

Get the distfile with another machine on which you have internet access and dump it in /usr/portage/distfiles . You can find the name of the distfile(s) by looking at the ebuild source. If in doubt, get all files mentioned in there, it won't hurt.

----------

