Netgear MA101 Rev. B on Redhat 9
 

Has anyone been able to get the Netgear MA101 Rev. B working on Redhat 9? I have tried many different snapshots of the atmelwlandriver with no success. After I compile the driver and type 'depmod -a' it tells me there are Symbol Errors:

depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/usb/usbvn
etr.o

I have tried using uhci.o instead of usb-uhci.o and it hasn't made much difference. Does anyone have any ideas? ( I have read just about every HOWTO out there).

This is the MA101 netgear USB wlan adapter, revB... and the atmelwlan driver set and redhat 9.0? and its stock kernel, with the kernel source installed, and the kernel source headers?

A couple ideas...

Check the atmelwlan mailing list archives and see if RH introduced some nastiness that screws with default compiles. If you don't find anything, ask on that list, although I would give the errors from an insmod attempts, blah blah blah, etc., as much info into the first question as possible.

Second, download stock kernel source, compile that, boot that, and then try the atmel with that. RH does things that are silly sometimes, but I doubt it, I got the atmel source to compile cleanly and depmod multiple times with vanilla 2.4.20 from kernel.org (plus the xfs patch).

However, I don't have the same device, but the atmel list is pretty reliable, if they have your exact device on their, it should work.

Cheers,

Finegan

success?
 

did you manage to sort this out - i'm just about to do this at home and came across your post.

I was never able to get it to work. I do not have much linux experience or compiling experience though. I may have been doing something wrong.

If you figure it out, I am still interested in getting this to work.

I had a similar problem with a clean install of Redhat 9. Some sources tell you to ignore symbol errors so that might be a red herring. I followed this HOWTO:

(http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/howto/howto.html)

but it didn't work first time. Reading section 7.2 in the troubleshootimg section led me to the file src/includes/usb/config.h and I added the following line:

{USB_DEVICE(0x0864,0x4102)}, /* Netgear MA101 Type B */ \

This made the whole stanza look like this:

#define RFMD_DEVICES { \
{USB_DEVICE(0x069a,0x0321)}, /* Dynalink/Askey WLL013, Compex WLU11A (?) */ \
{USB_DEVICE(0x0d5c,0xa002)}, /* Belkin F5D6050 USB adapter */ \
{USB_DEVICE(0x077b,0x2219)}, /* Linksys WUSB11 V2.6 adapter */ \
{USB_DEVICE(0x0864,0x4102)}, /* Netgear MA101 Type B */ \
{USB_DEVICE(VNetVID,VNetPID_RFMD)}, /* Atmel's id */ \
{USB_DEVICE(0,0)}} /* end marker */

Then regress to step 4.3 (Compiling the Driver). Once you've compiled and installed the new driver you may have the old one still running in the live kernel so remove it with 'modprobe -r usbvnetr' and then link the new one in with 'modprobe usbvnetr'. After this plug in your MA101 and run dmesg (maybe a couple of times). Hopefully you'll see it being recognised and linked to the driver - at least it did for me. You can then configure it with iwconfig.

This is the stage I'm at - I haven't actually got mine configured yet - my internet provider gave me a passphrase which works with the Windows 98 utility they gave me but iwconfig doesn't take passphrases. Good luck with your set up. If anyone knows how to apply a passphrase under Linux please help further.

Cheers,
Angus.

what you mean by passphrase?
 

hey angus,

thanks for your response, i did actually get mine to work - exactly the way you described.

now your passphrase question confuses me - do you get your 'net access via a wireless connection? if this is the case, i'm assuming the passphrase is a standard 802.11x encryption key and you should be able to assign it with iwconfig. i've extracted the paste below from the iwconfig man page:

key/enc[ryption]
Used to manipulate encryption or scrambling keys and encryption mode.

To set the current encryption key, just enter the key in hex digits as XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX or XXXXXXXX. To set a key other than the current key, prepend or append [index] to the key itself (this won't change which is the active key). You can also enter the key as an ASCII string by using the s: prefix. Passphrase is currently not supported.
To change which key is the current active key, just enter [index] (without entering any key value).
off and on disable and reenable encryption, open set the system in open mode (accept non-encrypted packets) and restricted discard non-encrypted packets.
If you need to set multiple keys, or set a key and change the active key, you need to use multiple key directives. Arguments can be put in any order, the last one will take precendence.
Examples :
iwconfig eth0 key 0123-4567-89
iwconfig eth0 key s:password [2]
iwconfig eth0 key [2] open
iwconfig eth0 key off
iwconfig eth0 key restricted [3] 0123456789
iwconfig eth0 key 01-23 key 45-67 [4] key [4]

let me know if thats the case - otherwise we can try figure out exactly what this whole passphrase thing is all about.

cheers
michael

more info
 

i just realised that i was unclear on what to do with passphrase...

basically WEP encryption is encrypted with a key - a word, which is the passphrase you have been given. if you see in the man page i pasted, they stated the passphrase is not supported.

basically a passphrase is converted into a HEX code, which can be passed as the WEP key. so what the man page is implying is that iwconfig does not support converting the passphase into a HEX-based WEP key.

you can, however, do this conversion yourself and supply the converted result as the WEP key in iwconfig. this web page http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache...=en&ie=UTF-8#7 (cached from google) has a table in it for conversion, so how i believe it would work is as such:

passphrase = dog
WEP KEY = 646f67

i also found that there appears to be a tool around to do this for you, which i found out about here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/76183

let me know if this works for you
cheers
michael

which driver/snapshot did you use to correct youre depmod problem?