MA111 wireless adapter

strugglin_idiot · 12-01-2004, 11:28 AM

Hey,

I posted this message in another related thread, but thought that I might want to start a new one for discussion ...

I am also attempting to utilize the MA111 wireless adapter w/ a newly installed version of Redhat 9 (2.4 kernel). I have read many forum discussions, manuals & guides, to no avail. I need some very basic instructions on how to accomplish this as I am pretty much a complete idiot on this OS at this point.

I see that usb-uhci shows up as (unused). I was able to locate a file (./usr/share/terminfo/p/prism2), but I am not quite sure what that means at this point. Does that mean that the driver is pre-compiled? If so, where to go from here?

Any assistance is very much appreciated ...

Best regards,

strugglin_idiot

randomthoughts · 12-07-2004, 05:47 PM

I'm lacking an understanding on how to compile-and/or-place the files in the right spots
Any help, even to get me to where strug_idiot is at......

Biogenesis · 12-09-2004, 11:41 PM

The MA111 uses a Prism chipset, Here's a direct link to the driver:

ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-w...1pre23.tar.bz2

Download that file to somewhere you'll remember (~/ma111 will do, for the unknowing, ~ is a shorthand for your home directory /home/<username>).

cd to the directory you saved it and type:

Code:

tar jxvf linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1pre23.tar.bz2

A directory will be created where the file was unzipped to, cd into it.

Code:

cd linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1pre23

To build the project run make:

Code:

make all

Then become root and run make install

Code:

su
<enter root password>
make install

I'll post more instructions on how to configure the device if you get this far.

JayH · 12-12-2004, 06:06 PM

K, I did all this Fedora Core 2, only I changed the untarred config.in

PRISM_PCMCIA=y -> PRISM_PCMCIA=n

and

PRISM_USB=n -> PRISM_USB=y

Probably screwed something up, huh?

Sp, what's next?

Thanks.
Jay

Biogenesis · 12-12-2004, 06:14 PM

well, if you got no errors you didn't screw up.

The next step is to read the README file on how to actually use the thing.

Down the bottom you'll see:

Code:

FOR USB USERS:

A) Make sure your kernel usb support is running
B) Plug in the Prism2.x USB device
C) Run 'modprobe prism2_usb prism2_doreset=1' to load the driver into memory.
D) Run 'wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable' to initialize the
   driver+MAC functions.
E) Run 'wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_autojoin ssid=<your ssid> authtype=opensystem'
   to enable the MAC in Infrastructure Station mode.
F) Run 'ifconfig wlan0 <your IP address>'

.

Follow those instructions. The wlanctl-ng command is a read bitch to use directly (iwconfig is *way* easier, however it only works on cards that use the linux wireless extensions thing. I think the prism driver was written before these came out or something, anyway).

JayH · 12-14-2004, 09:56 PM

Well, no errors but a ton of warnings. One (at least cause there's several identical erros just for different identifiers,) is enough to stop even modprobe from executing. I tried recompiling everything with the original options from config.in (usb=n, pcmcia=y) and received even more of the same types (and other) warnings.

The unknown symbol warnings are apparently coming from the kernel version comparisons in src/include/wlan/wlan_compat.h. It's comparing the kernel version to 2.6.0 and defining symbols based on that. I'm running 2.6.5-1.358 and therefore ending up with a host of unknown symbols (e.g. usb_kill_urb, register_wlandev, etc....)

I'm going to try upping the kernel version numbers in that header to 2.6.5 and recompiling and see what happens then................

Jay

JayH · 12-14-2004, 10:48 PM

Actually, all I had to do was move the usb_kill_urb def down below the else in the above header file and all installs and seems to work as per your instructions.

I browsed the README, but I can't seem to get any network activity/connectivity - I'm guessing because I don't see anything about using it with DHCP??

Jay

JayH · 12-15-2004, 01:26 AM

After setting up my IP address and configuration manually, I have full TCP/IP functionality. This is from my Fedora Core 2 installation. Thanks for the help and letting me jack the thread.

Jay

Biogenesis · 12-15-2004, 04:31 AM

To get dhcp to work you'll need to install either dhcpcd (dhcp client daemon), or dhclient. Then run one of them after bringing the interface up (doing the wlanctl stuff and "ifconfig wlan0 up") so basically:

Code:

wlanctl
ifconfig wlan0 up
dhcpcd wlan0

You may also need to run:

nohup dhcpcd wlan0 &

to put in in the background (nohup makes the program ignore SIGHUP which is a unix signal that's sent to all programs running in a terminal when the terminal is closed, the & puts it in the background).