Compaq WL200 on Smoothwall

Tim McAuley mcauleyt at tcd.ie
Fri Nov 1 21:55:03 EST 2002


Hi,

I am trying to get a Compaq WL200 running on Smoothwall (2.0 Beta). I need some help.

Some information about the set-up and what has been tried so far: 
(I'm not actually at the working machine currently, so forgive me if I can provide all error messages)
- The WL200 is a PCI card but in fact uses the PCMCIA driver (it uses a Cirrus Logic PCI-PCMCIA bridge)
- The wl200 is based on a prism 2 chipset.
- Smoothwall has a 2.4.19 kernel. It does not have any pcmcia support as standard.
- Smoothwall does not have a gcc compiler so the build of drivers is done on a Redhat 8.0 machine.
- Smoothwall box is a pentium 100.

First attempt - Download and configure kernel:
- Downloaded 2.4.19 source.
- Configured it with module versioning switched off, system = i586, experimental switched on, support for orinoco pci enabled.
- Compiled kernel and modules
- Copied hermes, orinoco and orinoco_pci over to Smoothwall box.
- Was able to load hermes and orinoco modules but not orinoco_pci (reason now known... not true pci card!.. silly me!)

Second attempt

Step one - Download and configure kernel:
- Downloaded 2.4.19 source.
- Configured it with module versioning switched off, pcmcia/cardbus support disabled, system = classic pentium (same as 586?)
- Compiled kernel and modules (not sure if I needed to do this, but did it anyway)
- Installed modules (needed to build pcmcia_cs)

Step two - Downloaded and configured pcmcia
- Downloaded pcmcia_cs 3.2.1 source
- Pointed the kernel source and module variables to 2.4.19.
- Built modules (included the kernel modules because smoothwall doesn't have support already... I think)

Step three - Transfer items to Smoothwall box.
- Copied across the modules:
    pcmcia - pcmcia_core, i82365, ds,     (/lib/modules/2.4.19/kernel/drivers/pcmcia)
    wl200 - hermes, orinoco, orinoco_cs   (/lib/modules/2.4.19/kernel/drivers/net/wireless)
- Copied  across settings (all under etc folder of pcmcia_cs) and placed on the below under /etc/pcmcia (created folder)
    network, network.opts, wireless.opts
- Copied across bin utilities (not in path currently, just home folder)

Step four - Try and start up everything and see if we get smoke
- Able to load pcmcia modules (but not by using modprobe), and only the following (which I think is all I need)
    insmod pcmcia_core, i82365, ds (all worked)
    insmod hermes, orinoco, orinoco_cs   
- Tried to use cardmgr to initiate drivers
    pcmcia modules seem to work fine. Found correct chipset. Found wl100 card (not wl200... but is there much difference apart from packaging?) but was unable to connect socket 0 to orinoco_cs (reason: operation not permitted).

Some other info:
- I can't seem to be able to use modprobe on the pcmcia drivers because it complains about a circular dependency.
- I compile and copied across the wireless extensions but they are not in the path... I've just thought about this now... could this be a major flaw? Do the extensions need to be in the path for the orinoco_cs driver to be used correctly...hmmm fingers crossed!
- wireless.opts was stripped down and only setting:
    mode = ah-hoc, rate = auto, freq=3 (also tried channel=3) and a few other ones I can't remember.
- My main learning point on the web has been: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/


Well that's it for the moment. The main thing here is that I'm unable to just download the source on the smoothwall box and the run the install options. I have to manually do everything. Over the last few days I feel I've progressed a fair bit (i.e. to be able to load the orinoco_cs driver at all!) but still need something more.

I will be at my machine in a few hours so will sending some logs and more info then.

Any ideas greatly received!

Thanks,

Tim

    
    
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