ndiswrapper cannot be removed

[Tony Pursell]

ndisgtk was installed to test if a USB wireless modem could be enabled using ndiswrapper. It did not so it was 'purged' and so was ndiswrapper-common. However, the ndiswrapper modules are still being loaded. Removing and inserting the USB wireless modem results in the following syslog entries

Oct 12 21:58:00 osiris kernel: [ 494.006015] usb 1-7: USB disconnect, address 5
Oct 12 21:58:05 osiris kernel: [ 498.368050] usb 1-7: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
Oct 12 21:58:05 osiris kernel: [ 498.518386] usb 1-7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Oct 12 21:58:05 osiris kernel: [ 498.570974] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
Oct 12 21:58:05 osiris kernel: [ 498.580555] ndiswrapper version 1.55 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no)
Oct 12 21:58:05 osiris kernel: [ 498.583130] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

This can be disabled by blacklisting ndiswrapper, but this still does not cause the original modules for the USB wireless modem to be loaded.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: ndiswrapper-common (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-25.44-generic-pae 2.6.32.21+drm33.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-25-generic-pae i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Oct 12 22:22:02 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ndiswrapper

[Andreas Gnau (rondom)]

This is in my opinion expected. You need to remove the driver using ndisgtk or the ndiswrapper-command-line-tool.

[Tony Pursell (ajpursell)]

You can remove the driver using ndisgtk, then remove ndisgtk and the other packages installed with it using apt-get, but this does not stop the ndiswapper module being loaded. To do that you also have to manually remove the ndiswrapper configuration files.

The command apt-get --purge remove ndiswrapper-utils should remove these configuration files but it doesn't.

The manual entry for apt-get says "purge is identical to remove except that packages are removed and purged (any configuration files are deleted too)".

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

Yes, this should be done when purging ndiswrapper-common