All comments, suggestions etc. are welcome. Please contact me at wf-hp@gmx.net.
A few days ago I decided to get me a new toy. I bought a wireless LAN-Card together with an access-point (short AP) to avoid 20 metres of Twisted-Pair Cable lying through the corridors of my home.
I chose the Ovislink hardware, because on the box of the PCMCIA-card Linux was listed as an OS which supported the card. The manual of the AP which they allowed me to read in the shop said it had to be configured over SNMP. After doing a little research on google I found out, that chances were good this could be done with one of the programs from ap-utils. I hoped it would work, but I have to confess I would have also used Windows for the configuration, since the price was rather low and I badly wanted to have that thing.
I own a HP Omnibook XE3-GC (the old variant with the Savage-Chip) running Debian/sarge at the moment (in stable/woody the package ap-utils was not included) and a router running Debian/woody, which now got a second NIC (network interface card) to attach the AP.
The WLAN-Card has a Prism2-Chip which is supported by linux-wlan-ng.
In this file I will only cover the relevant details for WLAN-Configuration. For the basics please refer to the PCMCIA-HOWTO.
I heard reports that this card also worked with orinoco_cs. I will continue to use prism2_cs since it is the 'official' driver-module offered by Ovislink, but I am interested in reports about using orinoco_cs, especially the differences to prism2_cs.
Things you need for compiling linux-wlan-ng:
- sources of linux-wlan-ng from http://www.linux-wlan.com
- sources of pcmcia-cs from http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net
- sources of your linux kernel from http://www.kernel.org
For Debian-users: apt-get source linux-wlan-ng pcmcia-cs kernel-source-`uname -r`
Run ./Configure in the source-directory of pcmcia-cs.
Run ./Configure in the source-directory of linux-wlan-ng and answer the following question with yes:
Build Prism2.x PCMCIA Card Services (_cs) driver? (y/n) [y]: y
The other modules (PCI- and USB-drivers) are not needed.
Compile and install (as root) pcmcia-cs (if it is not installed yet) and linux-wlan-ng by running in both of the source-directories:
make && make install.
Add the following lines to the file /etc/pcmcia/config.opts. In case you are using Debian you can add it to /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.conf, since all *.conf-files in /etc/pcmcia/ are sourced from /etc/pcmcia/config.opts:
card "Intersil PRISM2 11 Mbps Wireless Adapter"
manfid 0x0156, 0x0002
bind "prism2_cs"
With this card-definition the card will be recognized correctly by cardmgr when it is inserted into the PCMCIA-slot and the module /lib/modules/`uname -r`/pcmcia/prism2_cs.o will be loaded.
Next you have to configure the files /etc/pcmcia/network.opts for the network-parameters of the WLAN-interface /dev/wlan0 and /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.opts for the WLAN-configuration itself. Both files are commented thoroughly and the names of the variables are rather self-explaining.
This is my /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.opts without the Comment-lines:
(YES, I changed my WEP-keys :-) )
============ Begin of File /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.opts ============
WLAN_VERSION=0
WLAN_PATCHLEVEL=1
WLAN_SUBLEVEL=15
WLAN_EXTRAVERSION=
case "$ADDRESS" in
wlannoenable,*,*,*)
WLAN_ENABLE=n
;;
*,*,*,*)
#=======WEP===========================================
lnxreq_hostWEPEncrypt=true
lnxreq_hostWEPDecrypt=true
dot11PrivacyInvoked=true
dot11WEPDefaultKeyID=0
dot11ExcludeUnencrypted=true
dot11WEPDefaultKey0=01:23:45:67:89:AB:CD:EF:00:00:00:00:00
dot11WEPDef