Installing the Atmel linksys USB drivers

ruronikenshin83 · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 42

I've recently returned home from college for the summer and am desperately in need of assitance. You see, at college, I use a wired connection, but at home, we have three computers strewn across the house, so we have invested in a Linksys 802.11b WAP and adapters.

On my desktop, I have a Linksys wireless version 2.6 USB adapter. I have searched around on these forums and found that my card uses the Atmel drivers.

However, upon downloading them and trying to compile them, I am given an error that /etc/pcmia does not exist. I am using the latest gentoo-sources kernel (rc5 i believe)

Would any kind soul out there be willing to talk me through this installation process? I'm pretty much a newb when it comes to this, so I need to know stuff like which options to turn on in my kernel, etc...

On a side note - I have been reduced to formatting my hard drive and installing the dreaded Windows XP *shudder* -- I must say, I always though that the whole "Linux is faster than Microsoft" thing was kinda like "My dad could beat up your dad." Everyone defends their own thing right? But after usin gentoo for the last month or so at college, I've started noticing the horrible horrible lag from Windows products...

Anyhow, if anyone could give me help in the area, I'd appreciate it greatly...

arand · Apprentice Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 215

I think you problem is this. You said you were using a Desktop so it does not have PCMCIA slots. I am also guesing when you run make config on the drivers you tell it to build all. I think what you nned to do is tell it to only build the usb drivers. I do not know which ones, but that would be my guess.

This page has a couple of links on how to get this driver working with usbs. I am not sure it it will be exactly the same for your card but it is a place to start.

http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/links.html

Hope this helps.

ruronikenshin83 · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 42

i thought about that too.

i tried compiling just all the drivers (my thinking was that i didn't want to accidentally leave anything out that i might need) -- and then i tried building just the USB drivers. and they both gave me the same error, which i thought was pretty strange...

arand · Apprentice Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 215

Honestly I don't know what to tell you. My experience with Atmel drivers is just from the PCMCIA side of things. Hopfully someone with some more experience can help.

Sorry I could not be of more help.

zendron · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Jul 2002 Posts: 82

Is it a newer WUSB 2.6 with vendor ID 0x077b and Prod ID 0x2219
or the older one with vendor ID 0x066b and Prod ID 0x2211.
Have a look at /proc/bus/usb/device lines beginning with P: .

If it is the newer one with RFMD Radio then you could use the driver from
berlios project,
this is a usb only driver. The latest snapshot you can get here otherwise you have to use the driver from sourceforge.

Did you already use usb hardware on your box, i mean if usb support is present in your Kernel? If so for the berlios driver do following.

1. untar (tar xzf ..tar.gz) the tarball somewhere
2. cd into the dir
3. make
4. su to root
5. make install
6. emerge wireless-tools hotplug
7. rc-update add hotplug default
7. reboot

Now hotplug load automagicly the device driver for the WUSB.
If you dualboot with windows or using the sourceforge driver you have to unplug the device, because the different drivers are using different firmware and the firmware survives reboots but not unplugging.

Now you have to configure your device.
iwconfig should show you there is a wlan0.
With i.e. 'iwconfig wlan0 mode managed channel 10 essid some_ap' you can now configure it to access an Accesspoint.

Make sure you have a line like this in /etc/conf.d/net:
iface_wlan0="192.168.1.2 broadcast 192.168.1.255 netmask 255.255.255.0"
and set the gateway="wlan0/IP.of.your.gateway".
You can bring up the device with

ruronikenshin83 · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 42

thanks a bunch. i'm back on gentoo now thanks to your post.

there's only been one snag, which is that i can't change my channel for some reason. everytime i try to change it using iwconfig, it tells me that my hardware doesn't support it. so i'm stuck on channel 10.

zendron · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Jul 2002 Posts: 82

From what i have read these days, setting channel and frequency in managed mode is not allowed. I didn't changed my iwconfig call because I get no error message. Call iwconfig without the channel and your device speaks to your AP anyhow.