Arch Linux

juggz

Member

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 18

Yet another 'need help with wireless' post

Hey all,

As you've probably guessed, I need help getting my wireless card working with Arch. I've read the Arch wireless wiki many, many times with no results. I have the scripts mentioned in the wiki set up in their proper folders. I have modified rc.conf according to the wiki/forums. I have also looked through the forum posts, with no results. With this in mind, please don't refer me to any of these sources - I can honestly tell you I've followed those instructions and recommendations to the letter with no results.

I am trying to set up wireless on a Arch 0.7 base install. I have wireless-tools (or is it wireless_tools) and wlan-ng26 installed. The first problem I see upon booting into Arch is that there is not even an interface for the wireless, all I have is lo and sit0. I am positive my Xterasys 2511B card is supported by wlanng (I found the exact card I have in their list). Modprobing wlan-ng26 (and various combinations thereof) all say module not found. Uname -r shows kernel 2.6.10 running but /lib/modules/2.6.10-ARCH does not have any mention of wlan in the main folder or it's subfolders. There is a 2.6.11.10-ARCH folder which only has a linux-wlan-ng (or something similar) folder inside of it. I am guessing this is the main problem, the wlan-ng26 is probably built against the 2.6.11.10 kernel. I also vainly tried to copy the folder from the 2.6.11 kernel folder to the 2.6.10 folder and then modprobing which gave me an error (something to the effect that it's in the wrong format, which is expected, I guess).

In short - I know wlan supports my card, how do I get wireless working with Arch?

Sorry if my post seems rude, I do not mean it to. It's just that I've used Arch in the past and would really like to get back to it, but it's useless to me without an internet connection and all my various efforts put into making it work so far have been wasted.

(I have a USB stick and another Debian installation on the same box that has a working internet connection, so it's not too much of a problem installing more packages into Arch. If you do suggest some packages to install though, please point me to the exact package I need and where I can find it.)

Thanks for reading.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Yet another 'need help with wireless' post

Well, you've identified the main problem already - your wlan-ng modules are built against a newer kernel than the one you're running. You need the 2.6.11.10 kernel package - no point going for the current 2.6.12.2, because wlan-ng26 has not been updated to that kernel yet. You can download 2.6.11.10 here.

The other thing you need to understand is that wlan-ng is the name of the package, not the module. Have a look in that /lib/modules/<kernel>/linux-wlan-ng folder - the modules are the files ending with .ko.

I've just implemented the USB driver myself - not quite straightforward, I'd have to say. In particular, I found the init script just threw up errors that I didn't feel like debugging, so I wrote a much simpler one specific to my laptop. It does work for others though, according to Google, so don't let my experience put you off. If I can help with you config, let me know.

juggz

Member

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 18

Re: Yet another 'need help with wireless' post

Hello again,

Although the wireless card is not yet working I can happily report partial success.

I was able to install the new kernel, reboot into it, reinstall the wlan-ng26 and wireless-tools packages, and modprobe the module that [I think] I need (prism2_pci). I say I think I need because even after modprobing the module, ifconfig -a doesn't show any new devices. Is there a step I'm missing in the middle? Doing /etc/wireless restart gives me errors to the effect that there's no wlan0 interface. I don't know why the card isn't being detected once I load the module. I checked again to make sure wlan-ng supports my model and it surely does. I tried loading all the modules that came with the wlan-ng26 package one by one but none of them brought up a new interface in ifconfig.

Thanks a lot for your help so far, tomk. I will proceed with configuring it once I actually get it recognized as a network interface, which is my biggest hurdle ATM.

I was looking into it more and also ran into the adm8211 project (which I know supports this card, because it's what I use in my Debian installation on this box). I will try to mess around with that as well, but I doubt that will go far.

More help needed! If you know something, please share!

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Yet another 'need help with wireless' post

No offence, juggz, but I came up against all the issues your describing, and I went out and found the answers - for your own sake, I would recommend a little googling/reading.

Having said that, I can appreciate your pain, as it's still fresh in my memory, so here are a few pointers. Have a look at /etc/wlan/wlan.conf and /etc/wlan/wlancfg-DEFAULT, edit them to suit your particular setup, run /etc/rc.d/wlan start, and see what happens. If you're up and running, well and good. As I mentioned this didn't work for me, hence the googling.

If you need to go further, bear in mind that wlan-ng is not fully integrated with wireless_tools - in particular, the iwconfig command is read-only with wlan-ng i.e. you can use it to display existing parameters, but not to set/change them.

Finally, with wlan-ng, modprobing the module is not sufficient to create the wlan0 interface - the driver need to be enabled, either with the init script, or if you're doing it the hard way, with the command

wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable

Have fun - I know I did...