I have owned this card for about 3 months now, and I have as of yet been unsuccessful in getting it work under Linux. I know this card, with its Prism2 chipset, is very well supported under Linux. What I want to do is to set up this little desktop as an access point/bridge to the internet under Linux. So far all of my attempts at this have failed.

I am running the card on the following:
-PC clone running a D865PERL Intel board with a 2.4 GHz Celeron.
-512 MB of dual channel RAM
-Yoper distro
-2.6.8.1 kernel w/ PCMCIA enabled through a module (output of lsmod to follow)

I have compiled and installed the hostap drivers, and I'm pretty sure this card, as a PCI to Cardbus bridge, takes the hostap_cs driver. Well, when I load the driver via modprobe, I get nothing when I run "iwconfig". Wlan0 is nowhere to found.

Here is the relevant output through dmesg...

hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
hostap_cs: Unknown parameter `wlan0'
hostap_cs: 0.2.5 - 2004-10-03 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline@cc.hut.fi>)

(the error message comes from me trying to pass the name of the wifi lan device by saying "modprobe hostap_cs wlan0")

...here is the relevant output of /var/log/messages...

Oct 21 13:13:40 localhost kernel: atkbd.c: Spurious ACK on isa0060/serio0. Some program, like XFree86, might be trying access hardware directly.
Oct 21 17:13:45 localhost kdm_greet[2407]: Can't open default user face
[B]Oct 21 13:15:55 localhost kernel: hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
Oct 21 13:15:55 localhost kernel: hostap_cs: Unknown parameter `wlan0'
Oct 21 13:15:55 localhost kernel: hostap_cs: 0.2.5 - 2004-10-03 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline@cc.hut.fi>)]/B]
Oct 21 13:18:08 localhost kernel: ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:01.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, low) ->IRQ 22
Oct 21 13:18:41 localhost kernel: CSLIP: code copyright 1989 Regents of the University of California

...here is the output of lspci...

root@localhost init.d # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82865G/PE/P PCI to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) Ultra ATA 100 Storage Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801EB (ICH5) Serial ATA 150 Storage Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller(rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15)
02:00.0 PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev 07)
02:01.0 Communication controller: Intel Corp. 536EP Data Fax Modem
02:07.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Lucent Microelectronics FW323 (rev 61)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82562EZ 10/100 Ethernet Controller (rev 01)

...here is the output of iwconfig...

root@localhost init.d # iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

dummy0 no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions.

ppp0 no wireless extensions.

...and here, finally, is the output of lsmod...

root@localhost init.d # lsmod
Module Size Used by
ppp_deflate 4224 1
zlib_deflate 17432 1 ppp_deflate
zlib_inflate 16512 1 ppp_deflate
bsd_comp 4480 0
ppp_async 8064 1
crc_ccitt 1408 1 ppp_async
ppp_generic 17556 7 ppp_deflate,bsd_comp,ppp_async
slhc 4992 1 ppp_generic
Intel536 908676 0
hostap_cs 44568 0
hostap 82952 1 hostap_cs
ds 12164 1 hostap_cs
lp 7464 0
parport 23496 1 lp
eth1394 15112 0
e100 23552 0
ohci1394 24964 0
ieee1394 257080 2 eth1394,ohci1394
pd6729 6016 1
pcmcia_core 32652 3 hostap_cs,ds,pd6729
nvidia 4594388 12
snd_intel8x0 23212 2
snd_ac97_codec 44164 1 snd_intel8x0
gameport 2048 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_mpu401_uart 4480 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_rawmidi 14756 1 snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device 4744 1 snd_rawmidi
ata_piix 5124 0
libata 23172 1 ata_piix
sd_mod 14848 0
ehci_hcd 21124 0
usb_storage 38304 0
joydev 7104 0
usbhid 23232 0
uhci_hcd 23056 0
usbcore 71652 6 ehci_hcd,usb_storage,usbhid,uhci_hcd
intel_mch_agp 6544 1
agpgart 18472 2 intel_mch_agp
evdev 6656 0
snd_pcm_oss 38184 0
snd_pcm 54536 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm_oss
snd_page_alloc 6536 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
snd_timer 15236 1 snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 13056 2 snd_pcm_oss
snd 29668 11 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer ,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 4960 2 snd
rtc 8760 0

I have googled, and googled, and googled... and googled some more, but haven't found anything relevant to my specific situation. What have I done wrong? Thanks a lot.

This is a laptop? Correct? Or at least you've got the card in a true pcmcia bridge right? If so, you can't hand modprobe old pcmcia drivers, and as there never were any prism2 cardbus cards, you'll have to let pcmcia-cs's cardmgr load the driver for you. First, is pcmcia running? Second, did the hostap.conf file get written properly to /etc/pcmcia/

If all of the above is so, what's the output of: /sbin/cardctl ident

Cheers,

Finegan

I should have mentioned, this is desktop. I might have erred in saying "cardbus". cardctl ident gives the following:

root@localhost src # cardctl ident
Socket 0:
no product info available
Socket 1:
no product info available

As for this being a "true PCMCIA bridge", I'm not sure what you mean. This is a PCI card that is plugged into one of my PCi slots. Whatever is going on in the chipset itself I can't tell, aside from what lspci says, as I quoted in my original post. As soon as I "modprobe hostap_cs", PCMCIA appears to load the necessary modules (as seen in lsmod, also quoted in my original post). Finally, as for hostap.conf getting written to /etc/pcmcia/ "properly", I'm not sure I quite know what you mean. It's definitely there, and the contents of the file are what they should be, but aside from that, I don't know what you mean by "properly".

Hope this sheds some light. Thanks!

What does the ouptut of 'lspci' have to say about your hardware?

/me decides to read the entire thread...

"Oohhh. There's the output up at the top!"

Ok, here's a detailed view of lspci -vv:

02:00.0 PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev 07)
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping+ SERR+ FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=slow >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 21
Region 0: I/O ports at bc00


lspci -v yields:

2:00.0 PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev 07)
Flags: stepping, slow devsel, IRQ 21
I/O ports at bc0

Hope this helps.

This is where I get confused, because pcmcia_core and ds are loaded and you've got a cirrus pcmcia controller there, so this is... like a laptop. Have you got one of those coolio pcmcia PCI cards in a desktop? It seems the only thing that makes sense from the fact cardctl returns info and lspci says that's there, and I don't think they've crammed the ich5 into a laptop board, especially not the sata aspect of the chipset... But the wireless card seems to be absent. Its not appearing under lspci and its not in the pcmcia slot accordning to cardctl, sorry mate, this one is kinda confusing. Was the card in there for the lspci output?

Cheers,

Finegan

Thanks for the reply. Quick update: I don't have one of those nifty cards (I've seen them, they're cool!), just the wireless card. Here's the thing though... it mysteriously started working! I ended up having to reinstall my distro because I did something stupid (bad /usr partition), and all of a sudden it started working. So there must have been something bad with the original install. Thanks for the help. It was starting to get really strange though...