Hi All,

I'm trying to set up wireless on my RH8 desktop. I'm using a Cisco 350 PCI Adapter. I don't have anything of importance on the box yet so I've been installing RH8 over and over g in hopes of finding the right combination of magic to get my connection working. I had the connection working for awhile, so I know the card is good, but I can't figure out how to get it working again.

I've been all over the web looking for answers and there appears to be a zillion different ways to get things working and they are all rather confusing.

The approach I've been using is to install RH8. After the install is complete I have two devices. eth0 and eth1. eth1 is my wireless card but RH created it as an ethernet card. In KDE I select system tools/network and I delete the description and create a new wireless device. Then I edit the sysconfig/pcmcia and set PCMCIA=yes and PCIC=yenta_socket. I reboot, and of course, no luck.

So... I'd be grateful if someone could tell me what I am doing wrong or outline the steps for setting up a Cisco wireless connection for RH8.

Thanks

Here are the steps I used to get the card working. I know there are a lot of different ways to do ths, but these steps worked for me. To prove that the steps work I reinstalled RH8 a second time, so I know I can repeat the process from scratch and end up with a working connection. Actual syntax for commands are in quotes.

1) Log in as root.

2) Create a temporary directory mytemp.

3) Copy Linux-ACU-Driver-V2.0A.tar.gz from the disk provided with the card (or downloaded from Cisco's site.)

4) Untar the file in directory mytemp:
" tar zxvf linux-ACU-Driver-V2.0A-tar.gz"

5) Inside directory mytemp execute cwinstall:
"sh cwinstall". (This will create /opt/cisco/bin which I didn't use and kpciinstall, which you will need.)

6) Answer no to all of prompts until the script ends. You will not need to run cwinstall again.

7) Enter the command ls to display the contents of the mytemp directory. Note the existence of script kpciinstall.

8) Execute kpciinstall:
"sh ./kpciinstall"

9) Load the airo module:
"insmod airo" (I ignored the error messages.)

10) Inside mytemp (or in /opt/cisco/bin) change to the utilities directory and start acu:
"./acu &"

11) Your card should now be able to connect to the access point. Use acu to verify by selecting commands/status. If you have a good connection you will see a status bar at bottom of the screen.

12) Run the bcard program:
"./bcard"

13) Start your browser and verify you can access the internet.

14) If you were able to access the internet, edit /etc/rc.d/init.d/network and add the following lines in order to start the wireless connection at startup.

insmod airo
/opt/cisco/bin/bcard

That's it.


I know there are other ways to do this, but the above worked for me...for the most part I followed the instructions provided by Cisco at http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/...inux/index.htm

The biggest problem with Cisco's directions is that they jump around a lot and they are for RH 7.x , however, if you read them carefully you will find the instructions you need to get the card working on RH 8.0.


Good Luck

Hello everyone:

Please pardon my ignorance on Linux OS and networking. I am trying to network my desktop running Linux OS with other desktops running Win XP home edition.

Currently, I am running Redhat Linux 8.0 on my desktop and I would like to know where to get a PCMCIA adapter card and also does it matter I put in Linksys wirless card. Will everything be kosher.

Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance,

Quaid

Hi Quaid,

Which card you use matters a lot. The most important issue is whether or not there is Linux driver for the card. Cisco is probably the most expensive card, but I went with them because they provide Linux drivers. (See trials and tribulations above.)

If I were you I would research the Orinoco PCI cards, they are cheaper and there seems to be more information on how to install and activate them. I know that Linksys cards can be made to work but if you are just getting started with Linux it is probably not worth the hassle.

No matter what you decide, spend a lot of time researching, especially on the Internet, before you spend any money.

Here is a link that might be helpful.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_...s.drivers.html

Regards,
Mike

hi everyone,

hi mike,
excelent post i installed my 350 so easy. That cisco help is pain in rear. you made install so easy. especially fr Linux newbie as I am .

but i have one problem:

when i execute:
./acu &
my system gets all crazy, slow, i can not move my mouse @ all. Do you know how to solve this. On this machine i have PIII/800MHz with 256 MB. Soon as i Kill ACU my system works just fine.

and I am using RH9

thx again

Hi Guinness,

Thanks for your comments. I'm pretty much a newbie also so I don't have a lot insights to offer. It sounds as though acu is consuming all of the resources. so it might be a priority problem instead of an acu problem. I don't know how to do this, but my suggestion is to lower the priority of the acu thread so that it releases the cpu more often.

Good luck, btw, the card has been installed for six months now and there haven't been any problems. So it looks like it's pretty stable once you get it working.

Regards,
Mike

thx mike,

what release of RH you are using. I was thinking to install RH 7.3, that seems to be most stable version.

RH 8.0 - and I really haven't had any problems. I have an AMD processor with an ASUS motherboard and a View Sonic monitor with AGP video card. All in all I'm pretty pleased with the system.

I use the system as a java development environment and the main applications I run on the system include Eclipse, Sun's JDK, Tomcat, and MySql.

Other then the Cisco card I don't have any special hardware so my system may not be a good comparison, but it's been very stable, so I wouldn't hesistate to use RH8.0.

Of course, I use the standard packages, Open Office, Evoultion, and Mozilla and they all work fine.

At one point I installed RH7.3 but I like 8.0 better. One other thought, I used GNOME for a while but found it a little klunky and didn't install it on my current system. I'm only using KDE at this point.

Mike

hey Mike,

i got it kinda working. I tried also with RH 8.0 and same thing.

than i changed firmware to an older version ( i think4.25.xx) and boom ACU was there

but now i have another problem, can't get card to accosiate with AP, i even tried with no encription and with open key and nothing :/.
On my laptop i have PCMCIA card from Orinoco/lucent and it works fine, Cisco 350 PCI works fine on win2000 but on linux just one more headce

I feel your pain...just so I understand...when you run acu it shows that you have a good connection to the AP, but when you try to use the connection by browsing it doesn't work?

hi jtoad,
i gott it . i don't know why but i couldn't associate with AP for some reason but today i did same think and its fine

Linux - do it hard way

thx for your help

For what its worth, I switched to Mandrake 9.2. The above approach works for Mandrake 9.2 also.

Mike

Guy's I could really use some help here. I did the steps listed above and still can't get my cisco 350 pcmcia card to work. When I launch acu it tells me I am not associated. The signal strength never moves and I never get connected. If I go into redhat network config it shows my card but I get this error when trying to activate the card.

"Cannot activate network device eth1!"
"Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06):
Set failed on device eth1 ; Invalid Arguement.
"Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B2A):
invalid argument "S:".

Determining IP information for eth1... PING 192.168.100.33 (192.168.100.33) 56(84) bytes of data.

- 192.168.100.33 ping statistics-
3 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors, 100% packet loss, time 2081ms, pipe 3
failed.

Anyone? I actually have a bit more info, when booting I get failed at airo_cs. Am I supposed to use the cs drivers or something else?