The hostap page (http://hostap.epitest.fi/) says that hostap has been incorporated into the main Linux kernel tree as of 2.6.14. Does that mean that one no longer needs to do a custom recompile to get hostap support?

Also, if hostap *is* supported at the kernel level, what does one then need to do to get pcmcia to use hostap_cs instead of orinoco_cs? I'm sure my machine supports hostap because it works with Backtrack, but I can't seem to get anything to work under Ubuntu or CentOS.

Thanks!

[Answering my own question so I know where to look when I blow it up next time]

- Ubuntu supports HOSTAP natively in the "Dapper" release. You might have to download the hostap support modules via Synaptic or apt-get. You *do not* need to recompile a custom kernel to use hostap drivers.

- You can use the Ubuntu "Edgy" repositiries to get the latest versions of Kismet, Aircrack-ng, etc... By default, you won't get the new ones with the default repositories for "Dapper".

- In order to get a Prism2 card to use the hostap drivers instead of the oricoco ones, you need to "blacklist" them in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist (i.e. add the line blacklist orinoco_cs)

- You can tell which driver your card is using with the command where 'eth1' is the interface of your card.

- Although I didn't get the wireless card to use "wlan0" (it still uses eth1), the hostap driver works fine and I can get it into monitor mode with In my overall experience, Ubuntu worked better for hostap than CentOS. The live Backtrack CD works right out of the box and is aready patched for hostap.