PrismII and Linux 2.6

AthlonRob · n00b Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 37

Hey-

I'm buying what I think is a PrismII-based PCMCIA card tomorrow for $30 at Fry's and am trying to build the drivers for it tonight... but I'm not having a ton of luck. :-\

I am running kernel 2.6.0-test11 with PCMCIA enabled as a module. My last WiFi card (which I fried, BTW) worked fine (until it was fried).

I understand linux-wlan-ng is the only way to get these PrismII cards working, so I tried to emerge it. No go, it bails out looking for modversions.h in /usr/src/linux. Why things keep doing that, I wish I understood! Actually, it was the pcmcia_cs crap doing that.

So I tried the ~x86. Same thing. So I cut the pcmcia stuff out. This time it starts building, but errors out looking for /usr/src/linux/arch/x86/Makefile - duhhh... no directory there. So I symlink it from /usr/src/linux/arch/i386. Try again. Now we're making some progress, it errors out with a sandbox violation:

Galahad · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 126

Am I right you are not root when you are compiling? Bad idea.

AthlonRob · n00b Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 37

Root is for installing, not compiling....

You emerge as root, but if you notice, you drop privs for the compilation.

There's no good reason to be root while doing the actual compiling.

BTW, I got the drivers working... just had to build pre16 by hand.

hulk2nd · Posted: Fri Dec 19, 2003 12:23 pm Post subject:

as far as i know you dont need linux-wlan-ng

lorgoth · n00b Joined: 12 Oct 2002 Posts: 24

The orinoco_cs driver in the kernel works for most prism2 cards. I have a D-link DWL-650 and it works quite well with the kernel provided stuff.

mike4148 · l33t Joined: 09 Sep 2003 Posts: 641

If that doesn't work, you should try hostap, which is in portage (hostap-drivers). It happens to be the only driver set that has ever worked correctly all the time for my two adapters (Netgear MA311 PCI and Microsoft MN-520 PCMCIA).

coondog · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 12:43 am Post subject:

Hulk2nd, how do i get the card to work after i've modprobed the orinoco_cs modules ?

What configurations must I make

jshaw523 · n00b Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 12 Location: Columbus, OH

When the orinoco_cs driver loads it should detect the card. If it does then you can configure your wireless parameters with iwconfig, and your regular ethernet parameters with ifconfig.

If you are using 2.6 you definitly don't need to use linux-wlan as the Prism 2 PCI/PCMCIA drivers are all included in the kernel now.

coondog · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2004 1:06 am Post subject:

Well here's the thing I load the orinoco_cs module but when i run iwconfig it says i have no connections ???

I have a DLink 650DWL card and I'm not quite sure why it's not working, because it is supported

hpux · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 5:35 am Post subject:

I have a similar problem with 2.6.1 and an orinoco card (Netgear).

I can get the pcmcia drivers working either in the kernel or as a module,
but I can't get pcmcia-cs to work, and I think that's why my iwconfig can't find a net
card

alwyn · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 May 2003 Posts: 140

Ok I figured this out over the weekend.

In order to get DWL-650 to work on 2.6.1 you need to do the following:
1) Compile kernel with PCMCIA support, Orinoco driver and hermes drivers as modules. Also have wireless network support on and yenta_socket as module.
2) Reboot and emerge the MASKED pcmcia-cs and wireless-tools. Also make sure you have the MASKED module-init-tools for 2.6.1.
3) Have yenta_socket in your /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6. Do NOT add orinoco_cs here as it must be loaded by cardmgr.
4) Edit your /etc/conf.d/pcmcia to have PCIC=yenta_socket

After the above your PCMCIA card would be recognised but not associated with an interface as the cardmgr do not know which driver to associate with it.

In order to achieve that you need to add the following to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts:

dlight · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Posts: 7

This thread simply got off track a bit, and I have not been able to locate any other threads that mirror my current issue more clearly.

My card will work great under the orinoco_cs module, however that module, and that card is not capable of setting RFMON. This is a requirement for my laptop. The problem is that linux-wlan-ng is not needed with kernel 2.6.x.

Does anyone have a proven method of getting this card to be supported in 2.6.x with the standard set of features?

coondog · Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2004 2:18 am Post subject:

For those who can't get their cards to work under Linux

USE NDISWRAPPER program

`emerge ndiswrapper`

clockwise · Apprentice Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Posts: 152 Location: uk

just at this stage myself, can i suggest for compiling the drivers:

rm53 · n00b Joined: 08 Aug 2004 Posts: 3 Location: Linz/Danube

sorry I am new to the Gentoo way of software maintenance.
I am able to "emerge linux-wlan-ng" but this version is hopelessly outdated.
I saw you use newer ebuilds like 0.2.1-pre20.ebuild - where or how can I get this?
And pre21 is current since some months and really better.
Can I make an "ebuild" myself from the normal linux-wlan-ng tarball?

thanks
rudolf mittelmann

clockwise · Apprentice Joined: 24 Aug 2002 Posts: 152 Location: uk

you can emerge a specific version by pointing directly to the ebuild, hence the pathname rather than just the package name in my examply above.
_________________
"if an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared." - niccolò machiavelli

bus.dch · n00b Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Posts: 57

Hi, I'm having trouble getting prism2_usb to work on amd64.

It seems to modprobe okay but not recognize the usb device and add the wlan0 interface. I have the config files all ready to go when wlan0 shows up. I have created a one-line file in /etc/modules.d, called wlan0, containing "alias wlan0 prism2_usb". When I do /etc/init.d/wlan0 start, it can't find wlan0.

What should I do next?

bus.dch · n00b Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Posts: 57

Still can't get the prism2_usb driver to work with my Netgear MA111 wireless usb adapter.

I got the same results on an x86 machine. No wlan0 after I plug in the usb device.

bus.dch · n00b Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Posts: 57

I found some more info on device descriptor read/64, error -71, take a look at url]http://www.spinics.net/lists/usb/msg02644.html[/url]. However, when I plugged and unplugged the device a few times, it didn't get the error anymore, so I'm not going to recompile my kernel just to get usbcore as a module.

Then I found this post:

guldan · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 81

According what I've read here, I do not need the wlan-ng drivers for the Prism 2.5 PCMCIA card withe the 2.6'er kernel ?
I use gentoo-source-2.6.15-r1 with yenta built into the kernel, Hermes chipset support built into the kernel and the Hermes PCMCIA card support built as a module.

Inserting the card leads to a: Jan 31 23:47:09 noti cardmgr[8338]: module /lib/modules/2.6.15-gentoo-r1/pcmcia/prism2_cs.o not available

Which kernel section is responsible for this prism2_cs module ?

EDITED: seemsas if the linux-wlan-ng package is bringing that module with it. That still does not answer how I'd suppose to run the prism2.5 card without the wlan-ng drivers ??