wireless at home again, at last!

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My wireless network at home is working again, finally!

The fix just recently became available:

 [29-Aug-01] Version 3.1.29
 -- Back-ported orinoco_cs driver from 2.4 kernel tree.

 -- http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/CHANGES
<-

 Linux PCMCIA Information
 http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/
 Tue, 29 May 2001 04:11:17 GMT


OK... let's see how many details I can recall...

I went to Boston in July; while I was there, my wireless
card flaked out; I was furnished with a spare, which
worked fine while I was there.

When I got home, the card didn't work.

I find out that it has newer firmware (version 6.something)
and (according to
 The Wavelan IEEE/Orinoco and its friends
 http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Orinoco.html)
the wavelan_cs driver doesn't know how to make that
firmware go into ad-hoc demo mode. (I don't use an access
point at home.)

Not only that, the wavelan_cs driver has been largely superceded
by the new orinoco_cs driver. But this new driver is a
linux kernel 2.4 driver.

So after getting the .config options wrong 15 or 20 different
ways (whose idea was it to not include ppp in the default
kernel config?) I got 2.4 and the orinoco_cs driver working
on my laptop, jammer.

Then I tried it on the desktop machine, shoal. No joy:

 Aug  9 09:18:52 shoal kernel: Intel PCIC probe: not found.

After hours of googling, IRC, etc., I discover

 ISA-to-PCMCIA and PCI-to-PCMCIA bridges are not supported.

-- http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/README-2.4
(since modified not to say that)

You see, linux kernel 2.4.x now has integrated PCMCIA support,
but it's not fully mature.

I stayed tuned, and finally when I saw the 29-Aug-01 notice
that the orinoco_cs driver has been backported to the
outboard PCMCIA code, I built another kernel (2.4.7-dm93.3)
with PCMCIA off and I grabbed the
 http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/pcmcia-cs/pcmcia-cs-3.1.29.tar.gz
release and built it per
 http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/doc/PCMCIA-HOWTO-2.html
and lo and behold, the Vadem VG-469 ISA-to-PCMCIA adapter
is recognized.

I kinda kludged the install of the pcmcia modules; I built
them on the laptop, did a make install, and then just tar'd
the /lib/modules/2.4.7/pcmcia directory and copied it over.
I should have done this:

[[[
Alternate target install directory?

    If you are compiling the package for installation on another
machine,
    specify an alternate target directory when prompted. This should be
an
    absolute path. All files will be installed relative to this
directory. You will
    then be able to tar this directory tree and copy to your target
machine,
    and unpack relative to its root directory to install everything in
the proper
    places. Newer PCMCIA releases do not ask for this; instead it can
be set
    with the --target= command line option to the Configure script.
]]]

--        Linux PCMCIA HOWTO: Compilation and installation
http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/doc/PCMCIA-HOWTO-2.html
Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:48:32 GMT

Anyway... then I fidgeted with iwconfig and iwpriv a bit, and
finally got a DHCP lease from the laptop.

Then I figured I should put the configuration stuff in the
relevant files so it'll work when/if I have to reboot.

I'm not sure I ever quite got there; I'm still losing
the IRQ roulette game: when I booted with the 802.11 card
in the machine, it grabbed IRQ 5, disabling my 3c509 card.
So I edited /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to tell it to
keep its hands off IRQ 5.

But then the PNP stuff isn't really working. What I have to
do is:

1. boot single, without the 802.11 card
2. make sure the serial and 3c509 modules are not loaded
3. isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf
(this initializes the modem and the ethernet card)
4. continue the boot process
5. ifup eth0; adsl-start
6. edit /etc/resolv.conf to use 127.0.0.1
(anybody know how to stop pppd from klobbering
/etc/resolv.conf?)
7. put the 802.11 card in; ifup eth1
8. restart dhcpd and bind
to listen to the new interfaces

or something like that.

Kind of messy, but once it's started, it works nicely.

(@@TODO: document NAT setup)


--
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Re: wireless at home again, at last!

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Parents:

Dan Connolly <[email protected]> writes:

> My wireless network at home is working again, finally!
[]
> I find out that it has newer firmware (version 6.something)
> and (according to
>   The Wavelan IEEE/Orinoco and its friends
>   http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Orinoco.html)
> the wavelan_cs driver doesn't know how to make that
> firmware go into ad-hoc demo mode. (I don't use an access
> point at home.)
>
> Not only that, the wavelan_cs driver has been largely superceded
> by the new orinoco_cs driver. But this new driver is a
> linux kernel 2.4 driver.

DanC,

Sorry I missed this with you on irc.  I knew you had issues but
thought they were stemming from desired (kernel, etc.) upgrading and
didn't realize you had a wireless outage :(

I purposely flashed (required using a Windows laptop, not just booting
off a DOS disk - *weak*) both of my Cabletron cards to this firmware
version as I wanted to get more use of lattest wireless tools [1] with
the orinoco driver, like roam capabilities for war driving ;-)  

I had to go with the RoamAbout 6.06 (also Lucent's) firmware upgrade
as the more recent 7.52 Lucent also requires Windows and couldn't get
the prerequisite driver to be able to flash the card on the borrowed
Win98 laptop, probably needed W2K to use that and see other people
have problems doing the same [2] based on which Windows OS flavor they
try.

My laptop is 2.4 with the orinoco driver and my wired/wireless nat box
(an old p90 lapper) is simply stable debian 2.2r3 with kernel 2.2.18,
wvlan_cs (from pcmcia-cs package) module and testing wireless-tools
package.

All I had to do to get the firmware flashed cards to work on both is
make this entry in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts on the NAT.

IWPRIV="set_port3 0"

and then do the same iwpriv on the portable laptop, I scripted the
commands I use to go from the default Managed mode to the ad-hoc with
the iwpriv.  You can now set essid for ad-hoc although I'm uncertain
if that's necessary.

#!/bin/sh
killall -9 pump
/usr/local/sbin/iwpriv eth0 set_port3 0
/usr/local/sbin/iwconfig eth0 mode Ad-hoc essid "Kted" channel 11
ifup eth0

On another subject, I noticed there is significantly more blinking of
the activity light on the wireless cards than before even when things
should be idle in terms of actual network traffic.  I'm moderately
interested in turning this down so as not to bombard my household and
it's residents with too many unneeded 2.4Ghz radio waves (no current
known long term health affects yet that I know of but why send
unneccessary noise?).  I played a bit with sens, rts, frag, txpower
trying to figure out how to configure the traffic but haven't done
enough homework to learn the ins and outs of this.  Anyone on this
list mess around with some of these iwconfig opts more?

1. http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html
2. http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Orinoco.html#issues

--
Ted Guild <[email protected]>
http://www.guilds.net

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