BT customers are provided with this USB WiFi adapter device to use in conjunction with wireless hardware that may be supplied as part of their Internet package. This hardware does not appear work out of the box in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) or Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), and needs a bit of work in order to get working. These instructions were adapted from a forum post at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=367448, and have been tested to work on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron).

Prerequisites

  • Before we start, you'll need to remove the adapter if it's already connected.

With Internet Access

The BT Home Hub comes with an Ethernet cable which allows you to connect directly to the Internet using the cable. If you can't connect to the Internet at all, read how to get the files without Internet access.

  • You'll need to install ndiswrapper. This app allows drivers built for Windows to be used with Linux. To install, open the terminal and run:

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper

Without Internet Access

It's a little bit harder without Internet access, so you'll need to use some form of removable media to transfer the files between computer.

  • On another computer, using Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager) select the packages ndiswrapper-common, ndiswrapper-utils and ndisgtk. When you're done, don't click apply, go to File > Generate package download script, and save the file to wherever is convenient.

  • Find the file you just saved, and double click it. If prompted, choose to Run in Terminal. The three .deb files required to install ndiswrapper will be download and will appear next to the file. Use a form of removable media to transfer these files to your other computer.
  • Now download the 1055 drivers from http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=26399&d=1172759681. Extract the files from that archive (bcmrndis.inf, rndismp.sys and usb8023.sys) to the desktop. Again, without an Internet connection, you will have to download the files from another computer and transfer them using removable storage.

Instructions

1) To start off we need to edit the file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-custom.rules to make up for a power issue with USB devices. You can do this in gedit by running in the terminal:

gksu gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-custom.rules

2) Then add this line into a single line in the file, then save and close it.

BUS=="usb",SYSFS{idProduct}=="0715",SYSFS{idVendor }=="1690",Run+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/$devpath/device/bConfigurationValue'"

3) Run this command from the terminal, which refreshes the system with the changes made in that file:

sudo udevcontrol reload_rules

4) Now run these commands in the terminal to install the drivers with ndiswrapper.

sudo ndiswrapper -i Desktop/bcmrndis.inf
sudo cp Desktop/*.sys /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmrndis
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

5) Reinsert the dongle, and click on the networking icon on the top panel. After a few seconds you should see a list of wireless networks. The dongle should be recognized and working.

6) You may find that the dongle isn't recognised when you reboot your computer. This may be because the ndiswrapper kernel module isn't loaded when the computer is booted. To test this, type "sudo modprobe ndiswrapper" into the terminal and you should be able to access the list of networks from the networking icon.

So you don't have to do this every time you reboot, simply add ndiswrapper into the list of boot-time kernel modules. Do this by opening terminal and running:

gksu gedit /etc/modules

Add the word "ndiswrapper" without quotes to the bottom line of the file, and save.

Notes

  • This method has only been tested using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), please report the mileage on other versions of Ubuntu.
  • Additionally, only WEP encryption has been used with this. It works and the dongle can pick up hidden networks when their SSID's are manually inputted.
  • Try going through the instructions again if it doesn't work in the end. Sometimes the device may work the second time round.

Credits

Thanks to the users who contributed to the forum post that this article was adapted to.


CategoryHardware

WifiDocs/Device/BT_Voyager_1055 (last edited 2008-09-15 22:25:35 by host86-157-4-39)