RedHat 9 and a Linksys ISA->PCMCIA bridge
 

I am attempting to set up a P166 box with RedHat 9 as a Router/Firewall and wireless access point. The first step in getting the Prism card going was to get the Linksys ISA->PCMCIA bridge working. The stock kernel did not load the module at boot time, so I built my own. I think there may be some ISA configuration in order, but it seems that the isapnp process is changing. lspnp comes with RedHat 9, but it appears to expect /proc/bus/pnp to be there, and it's not. Can someone tell me if there is documentation that explains this process in RedHat 9. Most FAQ's and documents I have found suggest that one should download the isapnp package and use it to configure the interrupts and such. This stuff has supposedly been moved into the kernel in later distros, but I can't find the "new" instructions. A lot of the stuff in proc does not seem to be where I expected it either. Here is the contents of /proc/isapnp after I manually loaded some modules (they fail to load on their own at boot time)..

Card 1 'VIA3018:VIA PCMCIA CARD' PnP version 1.0
Logical device 0 'PNP0e00:Unknown'
Supported registers 0x2
Compatible device PNP0e00
Device is active
Active port 0x3e0
Resources 0
Priority preferred
Port 0x3e0-0x3e3, align 0x1, size 0x2, 16-bit address decoding

Here is the dmesg stuff...

Linux Kernel Card Services 3.1.22
options: [pci] [cardbus]
ds: no socket drivers loaded!
unloading Kernel Card Services

I get Card Services version mismatch messages when I manually load modules, and I am trying to use the hostap_cs drivers.

The problem first seems to be getting RH to recognize the pcmcia device, the hostap_cs drivers are great for this too, that's exactly what I use them for, except I've just got a simple WDT11 PCI bridge card.

I would honestly check over at pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net and find out for certain that this card is supported, it might not be supported by the in-kernel yenta_socket driver, which would require you to compile pcmcia-cs as an external package and use the good old pcmcia_core module.

They left a lot of the older ISA based pcmcia bridges behind with the switch to yenta_socket and in-kernel pcmcia.

Cheers,

Finegan

Thank's Finegan,

It was ultimately a matter of figuring out how to understand the differences between the RedHat "way" and the generic way of working. I altered some files in /etc/pcmcia, but initially I didn't alter them enough :-) Once I convinced the hostap_cs driver to load, the rest fell into place fairly well. Now I have trouble with getting iwpriv to set the MAC address "allow" list. First /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 and company don't apear to accomodate multiple IWPRIV args, so I had to add a new shell script to the mix. Then I found that as long as wlan0 was in Master mode it would refuse to accept "addmac" args to iwpriv. I must set it to ad-hoc first, add my MAC addreses and then set it to Master. I just subscribed to the hostap mailing list, and I'm hoping for some answers. The error in Master mode is "no private ioctls".

--MM

I've never used MAC limiting on the wireless level, I always bothered with that in iptables. The Prism2 card I have now is archaic, at least its firmware is, and I can never seem to get it to not freak out if I try much of anything in ad-hoc mode...

Then again, I think I'm using the same version of the driver from about... July last year maybe.

RH's entire networking mess is still not that well built to accomodate for a wireless setup, much less one that is routing and not speaking "managed". Honestly, just ditch it and use rc.local, its just as safe and although its rather hackish, it works brilliantly.

Oh, if you're worried about wireless security a lot, since you've already gotten the hostap drivers running, you may want to stop by http://www.blackalchemy.to/project/fakeap/

Cheers,

Finegan

My remaining issues with iwpriv turned out to be PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair). Otherwise I would have looked at your suggestion. I am most interested in the directions WiFi security is taking. We have meetings at work on the topic (NASA/Ames Research Center). They want to eventually ditch wired connections completely once 802.11i or whatever it winds up named becomes a standard. I didn't have any luck reaching that link. My latest problem is getting the newer kernel source that someone patched with hostap to build. Also, I am starting to try and understand how to set up iptables. The canned answer RedHat comes with is pretty crappy.

--MM

You might want to take a longer look at WEP, it gets slagged pretty hard, but if you try out one of the key attack tools like wepcrack or airsnort you're going to find that it takes a huge amount of passive sniffed packets before the key can be guessed, even with a 128-bit key. Not exactly anything you want to bank on in the office, but a combination of that and IPsec, and it gets pretty ridiculous.

I never really started getting the gist of iptables until I just went out and found a vanilla IPtables NAT box firewall script, and then hacked that up as an example with the help of the ubiquitous IPtables how-to. I understand your concern with redhat.

Cheers,

Finegan