Configuring wireless card Cisco Aironet 350 PCI

tier · 2007-04-11 08:51:52

I'm not a newbie in linux but now faced with a trouble. I could not manage to set up the card properly. I just installed Arch 0.8 and it's not quite clear to me how to do this with Arch. I've read all available Arch's docs on this topic.
So my situation's the following:
I have the wireless card Cisco Aironet 350 PCI and I've been using it with Slackware for a year. It works quite fine. But now, when I decided to move to Arch - I cannot set it up. My card's using `airo` module and it is loading well. All the present network devices are recognized. I can see this by ifconfig -a.
I have 2 NICs in my system:
1) simple Ethernet card - eth0. Is switched off in rc.conf
2) wireless. There are 2 different devices for it in my system: eth1 and wifi0 (and it's correct). I don't know why is it so and how about this with other wireless cards.

For example I placed here network configs from my Slackware which works well with them and expect your advice on how to do the same with Arch.
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf:
##IPADDR[0]="" #wired NIC is off
##NETMASK[0]=""
##USE_DHCP[0]="yes"
##DHCP_HOSTNAME[0]=""

# Config information for eth1:
IPADDR[1]="xx.xx.225.8"
NETMASK[1]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[1]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""

# Default gateway IP address:
GATEWAY="xx.xx.225.254"

/etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf:
# Cisco/Aironet 4800/3x0
# Note : MPL driver only (airo/airo_cs), version 1.3 or later
00:0F:F8:*)
INFO="Cisco/Aironet"
ESSID="MoyEssid"
MODE="Managed"
KEY="xxxx-xxxx-xx open"
;;

Here is the ifconfig and iwconfig output in Slackware:
ifconfig:
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:F8:4D:EF:2A
inet addr:xx.xx.225.8 Bcast:xx.xx.225.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:9384 errors:128278 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:128278
TX packets:1714 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:785 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3023621 (2.8 MiB) TX bytes:224182 (218.9 KiB)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xb800

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wifi0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-0F-F8-4D-EF-2A-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:2312 Metric:1
RX packets:9384 errors:128278 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:128278
TX packets:1714 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:785 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:3023621 (2.8 MiB) TX bytes:224182 (218.9 KiB)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xb800
#################
iwconfig:
eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"MoyEssid" Nickname:"user"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.427 GHz Access Point: xx:xx:xx:5C:E5:00
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=0/65535
Retry limit:16 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:****-****-** Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=63/100 Signal level=-64 dBm Noise level=-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:11287 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:10331 Missed beacon:0

wifi0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"MoyEssid" Nickname:"user"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.427 GHz Access Point: xx:xx:xx:5C:E5:00
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=0/65535
Retry limit:16 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:****-****-** Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=63/100 Signal level=-64 dBm Noise level=-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:11287 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:10331 Missed beacon:0

Who is aware - please describe or give me a link on this, how the two devises eth1 and wifi0 are connected to each other and how to set them up in Arch.
Thnx.

iphitus · 2007-04-11 09:04:46

#
# Network Profile
#

DESCRIPTION="Default Network Profile"

# Network Settings
INTERFACE=eth1

# Interface Settings (use IFOPTS="dhcp" for DHCP)
IFOPTS="xx.xx.225.8 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast xx.xx.225.255"
GATEWAY=xx.xx.225.254

# DNS Settings (optional)  
#DOMAIN=localdomain
DNS1=
DNS2=

# Wireless Settings (optional)
ESSID=MoyEssid
KEY=xxxx-xxxx-xx
IWOPTS="mode managed essid $ESSID key open $KEY"

WIFI_WAIT=10            # seconds to wait for the wireless card to
                        # associate before bringing the interface up

Chuck that in /etc/network-profiles/ and name it something simple

then do "netcfg simplename" to start it, where simplename was it's filename.

To cause this to start on boot, edit /etc/rc.conf and add simplename to NET_PROFILES=(), eg NET_PROFILES=(simplename)

That should do you fine.... you might want to check up on your dns entries though.... let us know how you go. I realise this is somewhat hacky, but there's some brand new network scripts with far better wireless support on the way.

James

tier · 2007-04-11 09:10:59

Thank U, I'll try this soon but now it seems to me this shouldn't work because the wifi0 device is not configured at all...

tier · 2007-04-12 17:24:01

Excellent! It works! Thank U very much.
My conclusion - /etc/network-profiles/ is much more suitable way/place to set your wireless network parameters even it's quite steady.

And now I have a couple of extra questions:
1) What should I do with actual network parameters in rc.conf? Currently they looks like:
lo="lo 127.0.0.1"
#eth0="eth0 192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255"
INTERFACES=(lo !eth0)
gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)
NET_PROFILES=(tier)
and that looks and works OK. What about gateway? Should I comment it here or not?

2)Though everything works fine now, I can see that wifi0 device is not listed by ifconfig now (only by iwconfig), but in my Slackware system it is. Don't have I to mention my wifi0 device in network profile's section:
#WIFI_INTERFACE=wlan0 # use this if you have a special wireless interface
# that is linked to the real $INTERFACE

Thnx!
And sorry for ugly English

iphitus · 2007-04-13 08:56:02

Your rc.conf is fine, you can leave it as is. Just don't remove lo, whatever you do.

If it's working, then I wouldnt worry about the missing wifi0, although it puzzles somewhat me too.

James

Arch Linux

#1 2007-04-11 08:51:52

Configuring wireless card Cisco Aironet 350 PCI

#2 2007-04-11 09:04:46

Re: Configuring wireless card Cisco Aironet 350 PCI

#3 2007-04-11 09:10:59

Re: Configuring wireless card Cisco Aironet 350 PCI

#4 2007-04-12 17:24:01

Re: Configuring wireless card Cisco Aironet 350 PCI

#5 2007-04-13 08:56:02

Re: Configuring wireless card Cisco Aironet 350 PCI

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