21 Feb

installing a Netgear WG511 v2 (Marvell chipset) in Linux

So, earlier today, I posted about how the Netgear WG511 v2 from Taiwan (with the Marvell chipset) was a piece of shit because it was a damned pain to install.

I still think it’s a pain to install, but it’s no longer a piece of shit.

To install the card under Linux, you need to run the Windows driver through a wrapper. In this case, ndiswrapper.

Once ndiswrapper is installed, you need to also install the right driver. In the case of the Netgear WG511 v2 from taiwan, it’s these ones.

Once that’s installed, it’s a simple matter to install. Just follow the instructions on this page, which will get you up and running.

Don’t forget to tell your wireless network card to use the accesspoint for its gateway. In my case, the accesspoint is 192.168.1.107, and I want the wireless card to use 192.168.1.108 as its own IP:

 iwconfig eth1 scan
 ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.108
 route add default gw 192.168.1.107 dev eth1

That’s it! You’ll now find that if you remove your wired LAN (ifconfig eth0 down), you can access the LAN and the Internet through your wireless card.

13 thoughts on “installing a Netgear WG511 v2 (Marvell chipset) in Linux

  1. Pingback: klog » Blog Archive » installing a wg511v2 in gentoo

  2. i think that there are several versions of WG511v2 and that you should check the ndiswrapper wiki driver list before you use the XP drivers supplied above. aparently for some cards they won’t work and you need Windows 2000 drivers instead.

  3. I have a Netgear WG511 v1 PCMCIA card and noticed that Knoppix 4.0 Live-CD version works well with this card. So I just copied all of the files in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware on the Knoppix CD to my hard drive

    Just boot into Knoppix, mount your hard drive, for me this was /mnt/hda1 and copied all the files from /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware to /mnt/hda1/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware and problem solved. I am using Debian stable, sarge running the 2.6.8 kernel because of the Prism54 support. Now I am very happy not using Winblows and using my Linux laptop with wireless internet.

  4. Jose, this post was about the v2 chipset, which is very different to the v1 chipset. If I remember correctly, the v1 chipset is a Prism chipset which does have Linux drivers. The v2 comes in two flavours, one using the Prism chipset, and the other using the Marvell chipset. I don’t think your method would work with the Marvell chipset.

  5. I am using Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. the default kernel is 2.6.16.21, my netgear wg511v2 card can not be recognised.
    When I upgrade the kernel to 2.6.18. After lspci, I got this message:
    ———————————
    02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88w8335 [Libertas] 802.11b/g Wireless (rev 03)
    ———————————
    But the flash lamp on the card is not on. I installed ndiswrapper from yast. Installed its windows driver successfully.(from ‘ndiswrapper -l’ I can see it installed and presented).
    But the lamp is still not on and ifconfig can find any available wifi interface.

    How to deal with it? thanks

  6. Pingback: OpenBSD, Marvell "Libertas", malo and kismet « The league of extraordinary Dharma Bums

  7. Pingback: Supporting the Marvell Libertas 8335 Under FreeBSD « UNIX Administratosphere

  8. i tried installing my netgear card wg511v2 card on my laptop and it shows the driver as installed but invalid can anyone help? gota get rid of windows!
    installed using ndiswrapper.

  9. Pingback: minimal moralia » Blog Archive » OpenBSD, Marvell “Libertas”, malo and kismet

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