[PlanetCCRMA] Installing wireless card

[Juan Reyes]

Hi Joseph,

I didn't have to use RedHat-config-network tool. Though I am using version
15 of the wlan drivers which I got from the linux-wlan.org site. I also
got the wireless tools package from

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html 

Wireless tools has a script for /etc/rc.d/init.d/wlan and also has the
iwconfig script which you are mentioning. You don't mention the
/etc/modules.conf. You should have an entry that looks like:  

 alias wlan0 prism2_cs

 and do depmod -a after editing it.

 Do an rpm -qa | grep ^kernel to find out the version of 
kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.x.x. Your /usr/src/pcmcia-cs-3.1.x.x must match the 
version of your kernel kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.x.x. rpm package.

You should also edit the file /etc/pcmcia/wlan.conf the SSID entry with
the name SSID (which I take from your mail is fertile-grounds) your
wireless network is using. Open a new terminal window as root and do a 
tail -f /var/log/messages. If compilation goes fine and after all these
editing you should restart pcmcia card services by doing a
/etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart.  Wlan services should start 
automatically. If so you can check your network status by doing an 
/sbin/ifconfig. Wlan should appear in one of the entries. Alternatively 
you can stop pcmcia services and network services and restart them to see 
what is going on.

Hope this is helpful.

  --* Juan 



On Sun, 19 Jan 2003, Joseph Zitt wrote:

> I've gotten much farther on installing my Netgear MA401 PCMCIA wireless
> card under Planet CCRMA's RedHat 7.3. To do so, I ended up unpacking the
> kernel source RPM to a partition with enough space (using rpm2cpio),
> then unpacking the Netgear-supplied pcmcia-cs and linux-wlan-ng tar.gz
> files and "make"ing them according to their instructions, pointing them
> to the right place to find the kernel source. It appears that I turn out
> not to need to recompile the whole kernel (*whew*).
> 
> Trying to connect at the local coffeehouse with free wireless access, I
> see that I'm able to at least get the card to see the network:
> 
> [jzitt@gimel jzitt]$ /sbin/iwconfig wlan0
> Warning : Device wlan0 has been compiled with version 13
> of Wireless Extension, while we are using version 12.
> Some things may be broken...
> 
> wlan0     IEEE 802.11-b  ESSID:"fertile grounds"  
>           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422GHz  Access Point:
> 00:30:AB:20:D4:72
>           Bit Rate:200kb/s   
>           Link Quality:58/100  Signal level:95/100  Noise level:2/100
>           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
> 
> But any attempt to actually reach anything tells me "Network is
> unreachable".
> 
> Through more digging around, it appears that I need to set up the
> connection via the redhat-config-network tool. I'm running the version
> that's up at Planet CCRMA:
> 
> [root@gimel jzitt]# apt-get install redhat-config-network
> Reading Package Lists... Done
> Collecting File Provides... Done
> Building Dependency Tree... Done
> Sorry, redhat-config-network is already the newest version.
> 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 removed and 13 not upgraded.
> [root@gimel jzitt]# rpm -q redhat-config-network
> redhat-config-network-1.0.0-1
> [root@gimel jzitt]# 
> 
> However, it doesn't do wireless; the last entry in its changelog is:
> 
> * Wed Apr 17 2002 Trond Eivind Glomsrød <teg@redhat.com> 
>   - Turn off wireless. It doesn't work with all modes, all cards
>    and you can't edit IP settings after the initial attempt
> 
> It appears that wireless was reactivated not long afterward, in
> versions available from Rawhide:
> 
> * Wed Jun 12 2002 Harald Hoyer <harald@redhat.de> 1.1.2-1
>   - lots of i18n and migration changes
>   - wireless reactivated
> 
> Those versions have a heap of dependencies, which make me leery of
> trying to hunt them all down and install them outside of the Planet
> CCRMA apt system.
> 
> Any chance a newer version could be added to the Planet for RedHat 7.3?
> 
>