WPC11 Ver. 3 and linux-wlan problems
 

i've looked around and tried variouse things and hve not been able to get it to work no matter what i do. The most I have accomplished pretty much is that my wireless card is reconized and I see the lights come on on the card.

I can type cardctl ident and will see it.

After doing a bunch of things, I mannaged to end up getting the following when I run /etc/rc.d/rc.wlan start

Startign WLAN Devices: Error: Device wlan0 does not seem to be present.
Make sure you've inserted the appropirate
modules or that your modules.conf file contains
the appropriate aliase(s)

So, I added "alias wlan0 p80211" to my /etc/modules.conf file and got the same error. I'm sort of stuck.

I'm using the latest version of Slackware.

Other info:
the only file in /lib/modules/2.4.31/linux-wlan-ng is p80211.o ...though...in /lib/modules/2.4.31/net there is p80211.o and 8390.o

Thanks in advanced.

EDIT:
Thought i would add the output of cardctl ident

Socket 0:
no product info aviable
Socket 1:
Product info: "The Linksys Group, Inkc.", "Instant Wireless Network PC Card", "ISL37300P", "RevA"
Manfid: 0x0274, 0x1613
Function: 6 (network)

Well...i found out that i did something realy stupid. Since i was having problems compiling linux-wlan from source, i went and got a hold of the slackware package...but...I grabed one that wasent' for the kernel i was using. I went ahead and uninstalled that and installed the correct one and I now have all the missing files that I should have had before in /lib/modules/2.4.31/ . However, even though I did that, it's still not working. If i do nothing extra..i just get the wlan0 device dosent' exist, or if I add an alias for wlan0 (i tried a couple things with that) I just get a ton of unresolved symbol errors and a this device dosen't exist message (i can post the details of this soon). Now i'm stuck again :S lol.

EDIT: Here's the output of the errors of runing ./rc.wlan start

Unless there is some feature of the wlan_ng package that you need, I'd use the orinoco_cs driver instead. I've used it with a WPC11 v3 with no problems.

This it the entry in my /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf file:
card "Linksys WPC11 Version 3"
manfid 0x0274,0x1613
bind "orinoco_cs"

well...i tried creating that file you mentioned above with the what you said in it...no luck. I also went ahead and typed insmod orinoco_cs and got a bunch of unresolved symbol messages, similar to those of what I got from linux-wlan

Here's just a couple of lines of what i got...

Using /lib/modules/2.4.31/pcmcia/orinoco_cs.o
/lib/modules/2.4.31/pcmcia/orinoco_cs.o: /lib/modules/2.4.31/pcmcia/orinoco_cs.o : unresolved symbol hermes_struct_init
/lib/modules/2.4.31/pcmcia/orinoco_cs.o: /lib/modules/2.4.31/pcmcia/orinoco_cs.o: unresolved symbol alloc_orinocodev

There are a few others..i can post the rest if need be.

Anyways...some other day I guess i'll try recompiling the kernel again, trying out a few differnt things. I'm hoping i can eventually get this to work.

EDIT: I just noticed, that now if i type ifconfig i get
lo
Link encap: Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
Up LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets: 8 errors:0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 Frame: 0
TX packets: 8 errors:0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier: 0
collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 0
RX bytes: 600 (600.0 b) TX bytes: 600 (600.0 b)

Seems a little strange that that just suddenly appeared...

EDIT2:

Well, if i type modprobe orinico_cs , i get the following added to when i type lsmod
orinoco_cs 4436 0 (unused)
orinoco 33720 0 [orinoco_cs]
hermes 6048 0 [orinoco cs orinoco]
ds 7060 2 [orinoco_cs]
---------------
The other stuff i see is
i82365 38288 2
pcmcia_core 35008 0 [orinoco_cs ds i82365]

It woudl also be good to note that i removed linux-wlan . You know..i'm not sure if this is the best forum for this thread anymore :S oh well.

Well...I found this tutorial at http://linux.oldcrank.com/tips/wpc11/ and followed the instructions excactly. According to that tutorial everyting shoudl be working, since everything appears to be fine..but..if i restart the PCMCIA services...I get the high beep and then the low beep, not the two high beeps. I'm realy running out of ideas. From what i can see, everything is correct. Maybe my hermes.conf file isen't being read? Hopefully this can be figured out :S

Oh, maybe something worth mentioning..but..if i reboot and type lsmod...i dont get all the orinico stuff...i have to type modprobe orinoco_cs orinoco hermes before they show up. But if i restart PCMCIA services after doign that, it still dosen't work. Also, just to make sure, i tried plugging the card into a differnt slot. I should also note that this card was working when I had windows on the laptop orignally. ;-)

EDIT: On http://linux.oldcrank.com/tips/wpc11/ i was just using the part 1 instructions.

Hmm.

Well, you're still in the right forum. Wireless Networking would also work, but I think some of us span both. Not sure what's happening, though.

Removing wlan_ng was a good thing. I also think you're right that the hermes.conf file is not being read. Not sure why.

Modprobe orinoco_cs seems to be working, looking at your lsmod output. After the modprobe, try to bring up the adapter (assuming eth0) - ifconfig eth0 up. Then, see what iwconfig shows.

Well, in my /etc/modules.conf file I have the following in it .

alias wlan0 orinoco_cs

So, I typed ifconfig wlan0 up

I just ended up getting, " wlan0: unknown interface: No such device" ...I also tried ifconfig eth0 up just for kicks and got the same results.

Here is excactly what i have in my /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf file at the momment.

The permissions seem to be fine...anything should be able to read the file.

I also tried restarting the pcmcia services a couple times and redoing what you said...no luck. I did notice one strange detail though...even though i have that laias to orinoco_cs in my modules.conf file ...if i type ifconfig orinoco_cs directly, i get somethign a little differnt...the following:

orinoco_cs: error fetching interface information: Device not found

Now, looking over to /var/log/messages i noticed something that linux-wlan may have messed up...i don't know how to go about fixing this. I have left out the date and name of my computer due to my laziness of typign it :-P However, they all occured at the same time.

I thinkt he above is proving that for some reason, the /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf file isen't being read. Also, I made sure to check cardctl ident to make sure the manfid numbers matched what was in /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf

I'm completeley stumped :S Though, thsi being the first time that i have ever done anything wireless in linux dosen't help.

That same info is also contained in etc/pcmcia/config. Maybe try editing that file - comment out any reference to the Bromax card (the OEM for Linksys) and add the manfid and driver binding info. I thought the hermes config would be read first, but maybe not.

Well, that did the trick (sort of..i did it a little differnt).

First, I took a look at /etc/pcmcia/config and at the top it recomended to add thigns to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts . So, I added what was in hermes.conf to config.opts and everything worked. All I had to do was add dhcpcd wlan0 to /etc/rc.d/rc.local and everythign worked properly at start up :)

Anyways, thanks so much...don't know what iw ould have done without your advice lol. Though..it is realy weird hermes.conf isen't being read. Also, I should note, i dident' take your advice to comment out the Bromax stuff lik,e you said, and it still worked.

Glad it worked. Since I'd never had the exact symptoms, I wasn't able to be very specific on a couple of points. A certain amount of ad lib on your part was required. You did it well.