Netgear MA311 wireless and RH 8.0

Hi:

I have a Netgear wireless MA311 card installed in a computer running Red Hat 8.0. I can't get the card to connect to my wireless hub, and Netgear says that they can't help because there aren't any drivers available yet. Can anyone help me.

I'm a Linux newbie, so please assume ignorance on my part.

Thanks for your help.

Mike

There are drivers for the MA311, Redhat just doesn't auto-discover it right.

/sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci

Then you should be able to edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 with all of the proper goop, wireless info goes in there too.

Since I don't trust any of these manufacturers, if that module kicks errors, post back with the output of /sbin/lspci and we'll figure out what chipset they've switched to.

Cheers,

Finegan

Finegan:

Thanks for your help.

I opened a terminal, changed to su, and ran /sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci. I should tell you that I have a wired but disconnected ethernet card in eth0; my ma311 is in eth1. I next opened the RH8 network configuration utility, and after some fooling around was able to get eth1 to connect and to work. But as soon as I closed the network conig utility, my connection was gone, and now I can't get it back.

So I know the card works, but can't figure out what happened after that. Evidently the orinoco chipset is the correct one. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike

Uhmm... yeah, I'm pretty anti-GUI tool, especially since every distro's is different, it makes memorizing them impossible. Really, hand hack it:

Edit the file /etc/modules.conf, add the line:

alias eth1 orinoco_pci

That way, when the kernel boots (if you ever upgrade kernels, this may be an issue), the first network device seen is given eth0 by default, there may be a future reason why eth0 and eth1 get flip-flopped and that's just a hastle, with that one line added, the module will always get loaded, AND will always get eth1.

Edit /etc/sysconfig/networking-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

And just add in the info by hand, probably very little more than declaring the device dhcp.

Cheers,

Finegan

P.S. btw, the MA311 isn't an orinoco chipset, its a prism2 chipset, the orinoco driver was back hacked to accomodate for the prism cards.

Finegan:

Thanks again for your help. I have it up and running. The only thing now is that when RH8 starts, it fails on initializing eth1, saying the orinoco driver is not loaded. So I open a terminal, becoming su, and /sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci. Then I fire up the network control center and activate eth1, and all is well.

I'm guessing that I need something in a boot script to initialize the orinoco driver, but as I said, I'm a complete novice at Linux, and don't know where to put the proper command, or what that command is (probably /sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci?).

Can you help with this last step.

Thanks,
Mike

Hi,

I saw this post and thought it would solve my problemsd installing a Netgeat MA311 on RedHat 9.0 - but unfortunately it didn't.

What steps do I need to do (after plugging it in and turning on the PC) to get it working. I'm a Linux newbie but quite competent normally!

The PCI card right? uhmmmm...

Open a terminal, take your pick, Konsole, xterm, Eterm, etc.

su -
(enter the root password)
/sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci

blamo, the card should now appear as a listed device under your network manager GUI tool. Now if the above horks with errors, could you post back with the output of:

/sbin/lspci

and

/sbin/lsmod

If under the second command, "orinoco_pci" is already in the list, skip posting that stuff and keep going. If RH9 is autoloading, they must have finally gotten their hotplugging act together.

ifconfig eth0 up (this assumes that the MA311 is the only card in the box. If there's a vanilla ethernet card in there, then this is going to be eth1. To be certain which got what number, as they're assigned by which card was seen first, just poke around through the contents of:

dmesg | more

)

iwconfig eth0 essid nameofnetwork
iwconfig eth0 enc 1234567890 (WEP key, if you're using it, either a 10-digit or a 16-digit, if your AP is working under passphrasing, you'll have to use static keys...)
dhclient eth0 (that should grab a lease)

Post back where you get stuck,

Cheers,

Finegan

Hey everyone, i've gone thru the same setup for RH 8.0. I pretty much made a quick and easy runthru of how to do it with the RH-guis (sorry Finegan).
Clickie the linkie below V
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ighlight=ma311

Just remember to download the latest (v1.3 i think) orinoco driver and follow their instructions on installation before doing the rest of the steps.

Hope it helps.

Thanks finegan and Selbine - between both of your posts it was surprisingly easy to solve. For others who attempt this in the future, here is what I did (Red Hat 9.0 with hostap-0.0.2 drivers and only the Netgeat MA311 card - not any other ethernet card or wireless card).

Note: all this was done logged in as root / in su mode
1) After installing RH9.0, I renamed the /usr/src/linux-2.4 shortcut to be /usr/src/linux AND moved copied the correct file in the /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-8/configs directory to /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-8 with the name .config (I used kernel-2.4.20-i686.config) since the compile programme for the hostap-0.0.2 drivers requires these changes (standard on linux I guess?)

2) unzipped/uncompressed the hostap-0.0.2.tar.gz file

3) went into terminal mode, switched to the directory where I unzipped the files and typed "make pci" (as per readme file) then followed instructions once that happened (note this wouldn't work unless you did step 1)

4) after following all instructions to compile drivers, I typed /sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci

5) I then went to the network manager GUI (type neat) and created a new device and selected the new driver entries labeled "Lucient Orinoco and Prism II based wireless PCMCIA" which I promptly selected (not noticing it was the PCMCIA driver).

6) obviously this failed but it told me that something wasn't recognised in the /etc/modules.conf file - and when I checked it had "alias eth0 orinoco_cs" as the entry which I then changed to "alias eth0 orinoco_pci" and saved the file.

7) Upon reentering the network manager (neat from terminal) I was able to activate the card, finish the configuration (SSID, channel, etc.) and save the configuration and presto - it worked! (not - also set via GUI to restart the connection on boot, etc.)

Not quite a direct route - has a little detour around step 5 & 6, but in the end it worked fine so I am happy - still not sure if I missed something since the drivers did not appear on the list (or I didn't find them) but if this can help someone else sort out their installation - all the better.

Cheers,

Duane

Hmmm... uhm, this is going to be a little awkward:

Steps 1,2,3 above built a module called hostap_pci

On step 4 you loaded orinoco_pci

These two different sets of modules both work with the card, and really, the hostap_X set works in most cases much better then the orinoco's, at least for prism2 cards., and will doubtlessly work better the version of orinoco_pci you've got loaded which still has a nasty firmware timeout bug (actually, the driver is fine, the card has the bug), the newer driver has a workaround built in, v.13x, preferably v.13d

If you finished installing the hostap_pci module, you should be able to simply switch named in modules.conf, reboot the machine and if RH's GUI configurator is built right, it should just apply the same settings to the new driver.

Cheers,

Finegan

Whoops - guess I've been playing with so many drivers recently to get this thing to work I missed that - thanks for pointing it out.

When I first changed the entry in the /etc/modules.conf file it continued to work - however on rooboot (just to ensure it was working) I noticed the following error on re-boot and when trying to manually activate the driver: "hostap_pci device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization." (works fine when I boot Win98)

So I captured the output of those commands mentioned above and got:
/sbin/lspci :
00:09.0 Network controller: Harris Semiconductor Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)

/sbin/lsmod
hostap_pci 43380 0 (unused)
hostap 75460 0 [hostap_pci]
hostap_crypt 2768 0 [hostap]

dmesg :
<snip>
hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
hostap_pci: 0.0.2 - 2003-05-03 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline@cc.hut.fi>)
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:09.0
divert: allocating divert_blk for wlan0
hostap_pci: Registered netdevice wlan0
prism2_hw_init()
prism2_hw_config: initialized in 19951 iterations
wlan0: NIC: id=0x8013 v1.0.0
wlan0: PRI: id=0x15 v1.0.7
wlan0: STA: id=0x1f v1.3.6
wlan0: defaulting to host-based encryption as a workaround for firmware bug in Host AP mode WEP
wlan0: defaulting to bogus WDS frame as a workaround for firmware bug in Host AP mode WDS
wlan0: Intersil Prism2.5 PCI: mem=0xd8000000, irq=11
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 [PCSPP,EPP]
parport_pc: Via 686A parallel port: io=0x378
lp0: using parport0 (polling).
lp0: console ready
prism2: wlan0: operating mode changed 3 -> 2
wlan0: LinkStatus=2 (Disconnected)
wlan0: LinkStatus: BSSID=00:09:5b:2f:e1:55
wlan0: LinkStatus=1 (Connected)
wlan0: LinkStatus: BSSID=00:06:25:9b:36:08
<snip>

and for good measure, seemingly relevent entries in the log file:
May 13 20:28:25 localhost kernel: hostap_pci: 0.0.2 - 2003-05-03 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline@cc.hut.fi>)
May 13 20:28:25 localhost kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:09.0
May 13 20:28:25 localhost kernel: hostap_pci: Registered netdevice wlan0
May 13 20:28:22 localhost sysctl: kernel.core_uses_pid = 1
May 13 20:28:22 localhost network: Setting network parameters: succeeded
May 13 20:28:25 localhost kernel: wlan0: NIC: id=0x8013 v1.0.0
May 13 20:28:22 localhost logger: punching nameserver 194.168.8.100 through the firewall
May 13 20:28:25 localhost kernel: wlan0: PRI: id=0x15 v1.0.7
May 13 20:28:22 localhost logger: punching nameserver 194.168.4.100 through the firewall
May 13 20:28:25 localhost kernel: wlan0: STA: id=0x1f v1.3.6
May 13 20:28:22 localhost network: Bringing up loopback interface: succeeded
May 13 20:28:22 localhost ifup: hostap_pci device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initiali$May 13 20:28:22 localhost network: Bringing up interface eth0: failed
May 13 20:28:25 localhost kernel: wlan0: Intersil Prism2.5 PCI: mem=0xd8000000, irq=11

Any of these make any sense of why I could be encountering the error I am now? Even if I try and return it to the old setting I still get the error (without reboot).

You said hostap is the better driver - right? Or should I switch to something else?

Thanks for your help...

Duane

I forgot, I'm a nitwit, yeah, the hostap_X modules don't registerr the card as ethX, it gets listed as wlanX, so really that modules.conf line should be:

alias wlan0 hostap_pci

And then since the RH network tool has a prebuilt script for eth0, you're going to have to build a new one for wlan0. By default the device is going to be in "master" mode too, hopefully RH built it into the GUI to switch that down to "infrastructure", if not, this will:

iwconfig wlan0 mode managed

The hostap driver allows, and is set by default, to make your card the Access point itself instead of just a client of an Access Point.

Cheers,

Finegan

sorry wrong thread

hi again - a bit too much socialising the last week - but back now :-)

I played around a bit - but didn't know how to do what you suggested ("since the RH network tool has a prebuilt script for eth0, you're going to have to build a new one for wlan0") - how do I "build a new one for wlan0"?

Duane

You can probably use the same GUI network config tool, or barring that, honestly... just copy the old one and give it a different name, for instance:

cp /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0

During startup, RH will try to execute that script, as long as the device is there.

Cheers,

Finegan