[KLUG Members] multiple wireless networks

[Daniel Hedlund]

Eric,

Since you didn't remember to send this to the KLUG list directly, I will 
forward you information along so others can make their recommendations.

Eric Beversluis wrote:
> iwconfig (WEP key x'd out) gives:
> eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"default"  Nickname:"sonyc.localdomain"
>           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point:
> 00:17:3F:45:A9:6A
>           Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3
>           Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
>           Encryption key:XXXX   Security mode:open
>           Power Management:off
>           Link Quality=52/92  Signal level=-32 dBm  Noise level=-84 dBm
>           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Your wireless drivers appear to load and work fine.


> '/sbin/lspci' gives: 
> 
> "00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset Host Bridge
> and Memory Controller Hub (rev 11)
> 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82815 CGC [Chipset
> Graphics Controller] (rev 11)
> 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 03)
> 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 03)
> 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801BAM IDE U100 (rev 03)
> 00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev
> 03)
> 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM SMBus (rev 03)
> 00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #2) (rev
> 03)
> 00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM AC'97
> Audio (rev 03)
> 00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Modem (rev 03)
> 01:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AA22 IEEE-1394
> Controller (PHY/Link Integrated) (rev 02)
> 01:02.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475 (rev 80)
> 01:05.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus
> Controller (rev 01)
> 01:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM/CA/CAM
> Ethernet Controller (rev 03)
> 02:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
> 02:00.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
> 02:00.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 02)"
> 
> 
> Idon't see my wireless card in this list. According to the Hardware
> Browser it's: Lucent Technolgoies WaveLAN/IEEE Adapter.

Is your wireless card an external/PCMCIA one?  You can list the devices 
plugged into your PCMCIA ports using something like 'cardctl ident'.

At some point in the Fedora series, the 'cardctl' program got renamed to 
'pccardctl', so if the above doesn't work, try 'pccardctl ident'

If your card is what you suggest, it's probably using the orinoco 
drivers, which are supported natively under Linux.  Unfortunately, on 
Fedora-based systems at least (which you say you have FC4), scanning 
mode has been disabled in the driver; at least that's what I'm finding. 
  The following links talk about how to re-enable support in the driver, 
but the steps are somewhat complicated.  The first link is for getting 
products like netstumbler to work, but it does have a short blurb about 
orinoco drivers under FC4.  The second link is more relevant, but is for 
Ubuntu:
http://www.netstumbler.org/showthread.php?t=16802
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-12340.html

To get support for listing available access points, you're probably 
going to either have to recompile the orinoco drivers with support for 
scanning mode, or use ndiswrapper and use the Windows drivers under 
Linux.  Neither solution is very pretty.  With the orinoco drivers, each 
time you upgrade your kernel, you'll have to recompile and install the 
drivers yourself.  You'll have to do the same thing with ndiswrapper if 
you choose to go that route, but it does appear that you *might* be able 
to set up your system to automatically download a pre-built ndiswrapper 
RPM each time the kernel gets upgraded.  If you want to try to install 
and use ndiswrapper from a pre-built RPM, you'd need to set up your 
system to use the ATrpms repository.  The RPMs related to ndiswrapper at 
ATrpms is 'ndiswrapper' and 'ndiswrapper-kmdl'.  Using ndiswrapper will 
also probably require you to add some entries to your modules.conf file 
blacklisting the orinoco drivers, preventing from being loaded instead 
of ndiswrapper...maybe.

I'm not going to provide detailed instructions on how to get either of 
the options I've described above working until you can verify if you 
want to take either of these avenues and provide the output of 'cardctl 
ident' and 'lsmod'.  There's not really any point leading you down a 
path that either won't work or you don't want to take.


> I don't know how to get the answer to your question about how it's being
> loaded.

Run 'lsmod' and paste the results back to the list.  You'll probably see 
something with 'orinoco' in the list if you're using the drivers 
supplied with the kernel on FC4.


> 
> Running Fedora core 4 on Sony PCG-SRX77 (purchased Mar 2002).
> 
> THanks for your guidance.

Cheers,

Daniel Hedlund
daniel at digitree.org