madwifi

bigwheel · 04-17-2007, 02:45 PM

Is there a way to verify whether my wireless configuration is working? I think I installed madwifi correctly but I am not sure if it is working. At this time I only have a WPA connection in range, and do not have wpa_supplicant installed correctly yet (another thread).

I am able to see my home connection when I run wlanconfig ath0 list scan. Does this mean the the wireless is working, or is there a better way to verify that it can send and receive?

I am a little confused by madwifi because it does not seem to be an application, you cannot start it with "madwifi", instead you have to start it with modprobe ath_pci. I have not worked with modules before and don't really understand them. Can anyone give a simple explanation of what a module is?

H_TeXMeX_H · 04-17-2007, 02:59 PM

It's a set of drivers that gets loaded when you insert the module, and unloaded when you remove the module. A module is basically just a set of drivers that can be loaded into the kernel.

If you see stuff when you run 'wlanconfig ath0 list scan' then the drivers are working. Now, that doesn't mean you are connected, which you're probably not.

If you haven't already, read the how-to:
http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/FirstTimeHowTo

If you're connected try pinging google:

Code:

ping -c 5 google.com

bird603568 · 04-17-2007, 03:10 PM

texmex was all right except that you arent connected yet so you cant ping anything

as root do this

Code:

modeprobe ath_pci
ifconfig ath0 up
iwlist ath0 scan

and if the interface turns on in the ifconfig it works, i just felt like adding a scan for aps

bigwheel · 04-17-2007, 03:24 PM

As part of the configuration for wpa_supplicant, I am supposed to add the path to madwifi. But when I do a which or whereis, it does not find madwifi at all. I downloaded the tarball into /downloads , should I use that directory in the wpa_supplicant .config file?

Lufbery · 04-18-2007, 10:03 AM

Bigwheel,

I'm following your thread with interest as I'm trying to get madwifi working on my laptop.

As for finding it, have you tried the "locate" command? If not, as root, type "updatedb" and let it run for a while. This creates a database of all the files on your hard drive.

When that's done, you should just be able to type "locate madwifi" and it will give you a list of files and paths.

Please just ignore me if you knew this already and had tried it.

Regards,

-Drew

slzckboy · 04-18-2007, 10:15 AM

iwconfig should give you

Code:

ath0      IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Channel:0  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:0 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          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

the access point field should NOT be populated with all zero's but the mac address of your access pint.
madwifi.org has an excellent newbie guide.