Compaq WL200 on Smoothwall (this time in plain text)

[Tim McAuley]

Sorry, didn't realise this client was defaulted to html.

----- Original Message -----
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