Madwifi with 2.6.25-14

TonyBryan · 07-04-2008, 05:39 PM

I've just moved from FC7 to FC9 on a machine with only a D-Link DWL-G650 wireless pci card. Under FC7 I was using Madwifi to enable wireless connnectivity, and all was well in the world.

Moving to FC9 I now find:
a) Fedora seems to be finding an ath5k card, but I can't get it to work
b) I can't go back to Madwifi as I can only find an rpm up to 2.6.25-9. I have installed this, but modprobe does not find the ath_pci module.
c) I don't know how to install an earlier kernel version to be in line with Madwifi
d) I don't know how to compile Madwifi into the kernel (forgive my terminology - I'm a newbie) myself, to get around the kernel version problem.

How do I get Madwifi working with FC9 2.6.25-14 (or better still, is there any way to get around using Madwifi at all?)

Why is this so frickin hard?

Can anyone help?

______________________

Update: I've switched to trying to use the ath5k driver that comes out of the box with FC9 2.6.25-14

I have disabled Network Manager, and am trying to get this working using just the network service.

Output of lsmod | grep ath5k

Code:

ath5k                 105736  0 
mac80211              185184  1 ath5k
cfg80211               24712  2 ath5k,mac80211

Output of lspci

Code:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333]
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333 AGP]
00:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 07)
00:08.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! Game Port (rev 07)
00:0a.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
00:0a.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
00:0a.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 04)
00:0b.0 Communication controller: Ambient Technologies Inc HaM controllerless modem (rev 02)
00:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor (rev 01)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233A ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 23)
00:11.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 23)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: 3Dfx Interactive, Inc. Voodoo 3 (rev 01)

Output of cat /etc/modprobe.conf

Code:

#alias ath_pci ath0
#options ath_pci autocreate=sta
alias wlan0 ath5k

Output of iwconfig

Code:

lo        no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"..."  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=0 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B   
          Encryption key: "..."
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

pan0      no wireless extensions.

Output of ifup wlan0:

Code:

Determining IP information for wlan0...SIOCSIFFLAGS: Input/output error
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Input/output error
 failed.

Output of dmesg | grep ath5k

Code:

ath5k_pci 0000:00:0c.0: registered as 'phy0'
ath5k phy0: Atheros AR5213 chip found (MAC: 0x56, PHY: 0x41)
ath5k phy0: RF5111 5GHz radio found (0x17)
ath5k phy0: RF2111 2GHz radio found (0x23)
ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration failed (2412MHz)
ath5k phy0: unable to reset hardware: -5
ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration failed (2412MHz)
ath5k phy0: unable to reset hardware: -5
ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration failed (2412MHz)
ath5k phy0: unable to reset hardware: -5
ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration failed (2412MHz)
ath5k phy0: unable to reset hardware: -5
ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration failed (2412MHz)
ath5k phy0: unable to reset hardware: -5
ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration failed (2412MHz)
ath5k phy0: unable to reset hardware: -5
ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration failed (2412MHz)
ath5k phy0: unable to reset hardware: -5
ath5k phy0: noise floor calibration failed (2412MHz)
ath5k phy0: unable to reset hardware: -5

Output of dmesg | grep wlan0

Code:

type=1400 audit(1215253619.810:4): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=1955 comm="consoletype" path="/var/lib/dhclient/dhclient-wlan0.leases" dev=dm-3 ino=614619 scontext=system_u:system_r:consoletype_t:s0 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:dhcpc_state_t:s0 tclass=file
type=1400 audit(1215253619.906:5): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=1980 comm="ifconfig" path="/var/lib/dhclient/dhclient-wlan0.leases" dev=dm-3 ino=614619 scontext=system_u:system_r:ifconfig_t:s0 tcontext=unconfined_u:object_r:dhcpc_state_t:s0 tclass=file

TonyBryan · 07-07-2008, 05:10 AM

For anyone else with this issue, I had a response on another forum that helped.

Livna has rpms for madwifi for the 2.6.25-14 kernel at:
[HTML]http://livna-dl.reloumirrors.net/fedora/9/i386/[/HTML]

As I was working offline, I had to download the following RPMsto a USB key via my work Windows machine:

akmod-madwifi-0.9.4-31.lvn9.i686.rpm
akmods-0.3.1-1.lvn9.noarch.rpm
kmod-madwifi-0.9.4-31.lvn9.i686.rpm
kmod-madwifi-2.6.25-14.fc9.i686-0.9.4-31.lvn9.i686.rpm
madwifi-0.9.4-1.lvn9.i386.rpm
madwifi-devel-0.9.4-1.lvn9.i386.rpm
kmodtool-1-11.lvn9.noarch.rpm

The dependency checker also asked for sharutils-4.6.3-2.fc9.i386.rpm whcih I got from:
[HTML]http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=sharutil[/HTML]

I found the dependency checker had an issue with the madwifi RPMs, and had a cyclical reference between two or more of the packages for the madwifi-kmod-common packages. If I read other posts correctly, this is part of the madwifi-* RPMs, so I installed these using the --nodeps flag and all was good.

I had to blacklist the ath5k module.

Once this was done, I used depmod -a, modprobe, rebooted and hey-presto, everything works beautifully.

Oh - I ditched 'network' and went with the 'networkmanager' service instead.