Wireless on Sony Vaio v505bx

rech · 09-06-2003, 05:07 PM

Hi, I just bought a Sony Vaio V505BX, and I've been configuring it to run with Slackware 9.0. I still haven't gotten the wireless card to work though, and am unsure where exactly to start.

When I run iwconfig, I get:

lo no wireless extensions
etho 0 no wireless extensions

And when I run /sbin/lspci, there doesn't seem to be anything regarding a wireless card - does this mean that on bootup it hasn't detected my card? I've reconfigured the kernel with wireless, and have read some posts on other sony laptops using the orinoco driver, but I'm not really sure how to go about checking if I have that or not.

When I ran devicemanager from windows, it said this about my card:
LAN-Express IEEE 802.11 PCI Adapter

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

eric.r.turner · 09-06-2003, 09:09 PM

From what I've read on the web, the orinoco_pci driver will work for you. As root, try running "/sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci", then post the output of iwconfig and lspci for me to look at. If the orinoco_pci driver turns out to work for this card, then you'll just add that command to your /etc/rc.d/rc.modules.

rech · 09-06-2003, 10:01 PM

Running /sbin/modprobe orinoco_pci gave me:

/lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o: init_module: No such device
/lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco_pci.o: insmod orinoco_pci failed

iwconifg returns the same 'no wireless extensions' message as before, and lspci returns:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev
04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801CAM IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM SMBus (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY
02:02.0 Network controller: Harris Semiconductor: Unknown device 3872 (rev 01)
02:05.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475 (rev b8)
02:05.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C551 IEEE 1394 Controller
02:07.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
02:07.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
02:07.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 04)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82801CAM (ICH3) PRO/100 VE (LOM) Ethernet Controller (rev 42)

It doesn't look like it's detecting my card....is there something I'm doing wrong?

eric.r.turner · 09-06-2003, 10:28 PM

The device is listed in the output of lspci: "Network controller: Harris Semiconductor: Unknown device 3872 (rev 01)".

Doing a little googling I found that Harris Semiconductor is Intersil's old name. Intersil makes the Prism3 chipset, which I think is what this card uses.

I have a Netgear MA311 PCI card that uses the Intersil Prism2.5 chipset, and have had excellent experience with the hostap driver (http://hostap.epitest.fi/releases/hostap-0.0.4.tar.gz). Apparently the Prism3 is also supported by the hostap driver. You may want to try using this driver... it was the only one I could get to work properly with my Prism2.5.

Anyway, it does look like the card is recognized. It's now a matter of finding a driver that will work.

rech · 09-07-2003, 12:29 AM

I've never installed a driver before.....I tried reading the README file for the hostap driver, but I was confused on a couple of points. Is there a way to check whether i'm using a 'kernel tree PCMCIA module', or an 'external pcmcia-cs module'? Also, is there any other doc I can refer to to help me understand how to install it? Or maybe it's a really simple install, and I'm just making it complicated? btw, thanks for your help so far.

eric.r.turner · 09-07-2003, 12:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rech
I've never installed a driver before.....I tried reading the README file for the hostap driver, but I was confused on a couple of points. Is there a way to check whether i'm using a 'kernel tree PCMCIA module', or an 'external pcmcia-cs module'? Also, is there any other doc I can refer to to help me understand how to install it? Or maybe it's a really simple install, and I'm just making it complicated? btw, thanks for your help so far.

Slackware uses the Linux kernel PCMCIA code by default, not some other third-party PCMCIA code (unless you've downloaded and installed one yourself.) So you don't have to worry about that.

Your wireless card is built into the laptop, right? Since this isn't a PCMCIA card I think you only need to compile the hostap_pci driver not the hostap_cs driver. As root, execute "make pci". This will compile and the hostap_pci driver. Install the driver (i.e. make it available to modprobe) by executing "make install_pci".

Once it's built and installed (i.e. made available to modprobe), inserting the driver into the kernel is easy: "/sbin/modprobe hostap_pci"

I say driver but I really mean kernel module. A kernel module inserts code into the kernel (the core of the OS) at runtime. A kernel module can have driver code to "drive" a hardware device like your wireless card. In other words, hostap_pci is a kernel module that contains the driver code for your wireless card. The code in a kernel module doesn't HAVE to be a driver, but that's the most common use. Another way to get driver code into your kernel is to recompile the whole kernel, but I don't do that unless I need to change a lot of things at once.

rech · 09-07-2003, 01:09 AM

When I run 'make pci', I get a message saying 'make: ***** No rule to make target 'pci'. Stop ' - The README file for hostap_pci said something about editing KERNEL_PATH in makefile - is that what that's talking about? How do I get the command 'make pci' to work?

eric.r.turner · 09-07-2003, 01:22 AM

Well, I don't have that problem. You do have the Linux kernel source installed, right? Here are the kernel packages I have installed:

Code:

root@knuth:/usr/local/src# ls /var/log/packages/ | grep kernel
kernel-headers-2.4.20-i386-5
kernel-ide-2.4.20-i486-5
kernel-modules-2.4.20-i486-7
kernel-source-2.4.20-noarch-5

My compile and install goes without problems:

Code:

Script started on Sat Sep  6 23:09:09 2003
root@knuth:/usr/local/src# cd hostap-0.0.4
root@knuth:/usr/local/src/hostap-0.0.4# make pci
gcc -I/usr/src/linux/include  -O2 -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -Wall -g -c  -fomit-frame-pointer -o driver/modules/hostap_pci.o driver/modules/hostap_pci.c
gcc -I/usr/src/linux/include  -O2 -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -Wall -g -c  -fomit-frame-pointer -o driver/modules/hostap.o driver/modules/hostap.c
gcc -I/usr/src/linux/include  -O2 -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -Wall -g -c  -fomit-frame-pointer -o driver/modules/hostap_crypt.o driver/modules/hostap_crypt.c
gcc -I/usr/src/linux/include  -O2 -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -Wall -g -c  -fomit-frame-pointer -o driver/modules/hostap_crypt_wep.o driver/modules/hostap_crypt_wep.c

Run 'make install_pccard' as root to install hostap_cs.o
Run 'make install_plx' as root to install hostap_plx.o
Run 'make install_pci' as root to install hostap_pci.o

root@knuth:/usr/local/src/hostap-0.0.4# make install_pci
Installing hostap_crypt*.o to /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
mkdir -p /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
cp -f driver/modules/hostap_crypt*.o /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
Installing hostap.o to /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
mkdir -p /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
cp -f driver/modules/hostap.o /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
Installing hostap_pci.o to /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
mkdir -p /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
cp -f driver/modules/hostap_pci.o /lib/modules/2.4.20/net
/sbin/depmod -ae
root@knuth:/usr/local/src/hostap-0.0.4# exit
Script done on Sat Sep  6 23:10:14 2003

eric.r.turner · 09-07-2003, 01:26 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rech
When I run 'make pci', I get a message saying 'make: ***** No rule to make target 'pci'. Stop ' - The README file for hostap_pci said something about editing KERNEL_PATH in makefile - is that what that's talking about? How do I get the command 'make pci' to work?

It just occurred to remind you that you should cd to the hostap-0.0.4/ source directory before you try to "make pci".

rech · 09-07-2003, 03:34 PM

Okay, I was able to compile and install, but when I tried running modprobe, I got:

bash-2.05b# /sbin/modprobe hostap_pci
/lib/modules/2.4.22/net/hostap_pci.o: init_module: No such device
/lib/modules/2.4.22/net/hostap_pci.o: Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.22/net/hostap_pci.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.22/net/hostap_pci.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.22/net/hostap_pci.o: insmod hostap_pci failed
bash-2.05b# cd /lib/modules/2.4.22/net
bash-2.05b# ls
hostap.o hostap_crypt.o hostap_crypt_wep.o hostap_pci.o
bash-2.05b#

eric.r.turner · 09-07-2003, 05:39 PM

Ah, driver issues... probably one of Linux's biggest woes because most vendors don't support Linux. Your problem is going to be finding a driver that works for your card.

I looked around on http://www.linux-laptop.net/sony.html and found a link to http://www.littleredbat.net/~mk/vaio.html that describes how to set up Linux on the v505bx. There he talks about using a modified orinoco driver to get WiFi working. He has it working, and can probably steer you in the right direction.

rech · 09-07-2003, 06:28 PM

The patch posted on his website is for 2.4.20 - is it possible that I patch it for my kernel (2.4.22) by just changing the 20 to a 22, or does that not work? Also, what is the syntax to patch the kernel?