Slackware and linux-wlan-ng wireless
 

I started this thread over in the Newbie forums, but it was recommended that I try it here, hopefully someone here can give me some advice.

Several weeks ago I started on the endeavor of installing slackware Linux on an old IBM ThinkPad 380ED that I had sitting around. This is my second bout with Linux, the first one back in the late 90's where i installed mandrake as a dual boot on my main machine. I guess i never really go into it then, so I just stopped using it and eventually re-claimed the Linux partition for windows use. Anyway, I know laptops are not great fodder for newbie's but I kicked ahead anyway. So far I have most everything working. Slackware is up and running, as is X, and the PCMCIA slots as well.

More to the point, I just so happen to have an old Intel Anypoint II wireless PCMCIA card for this laptop, and decided I wanted to try and install it as well. Some quick research online reveled that the Anypoint wireless cards were not notoriously compatible with linux, but I did find references to them working under the linux-wlan-ng drivers ( www . linux-wlan . com ). So anyway, I downloaded the source, and started to try and compile and install it. After much trial and tribulation I managed to successfully get "make config" and "make all" to complete, however when I attempt to run "make install", it drops me out with the following errors:



It would SEEM the error is quite simple, this file, p80211.o simply is not being created, but I cannot figure out why, or what I can do about it. Sure enough, there were other files in the .../p80211 directory, but no p80211.o. I tried re-compiling and re-installing the PCMCIA module, but I cannot seem to get it to work. I even took a look at the makefile for that directory, there was a cleanup section that deleted *.o files amongst others. I tried to comment out that section thinking that possibly it was being called before it was supposed to, and that I could just clean up the directory later, but that did not work either. My delvings online have been unsuccessfully so far, as this seems to be a very generic question. Does anyone here have experience with Linux-wlan-ng or can give me some general compiling advice to get by this? Possibly some other drivers that will work with an Anypoint II wireless PCMCIA card?

For reference, this is Slackware 7.1 (don’t ask), using the 2.2.16 kernel, pcmcia-cs-3.1.16, and linux-wlan-ng0.2.1pre23 (also tried with pre22 and pre21). I plan on at least updating the kernel soon, but I would like to get the wireless setup first (yes, I know ill have to re-compile it all, but that’s all part of the plan. Stumble around like a blind fool and mess things up, THEN update and start over clean and fresh). If no one here has any advice I will probably post this to the Linux-wlan-ng mailing list, but I don’t know if this is a general slackware problem, or specific Lunux-wlan-ng problem...

Thanks

West Wind;

I also am working on setting up my Slackware with wireless using a driver based on the one you are using. In the README it mentions that kernels prior to 2.4.19 that there are issues with the USB core. With that being said, my suggestion is to use the latest 2.4, or even 2.6 kernel. There is a wireless section under networking that needs to be configured. Once you have the new kernel configured and running the drivers for your wireless card should work fine. I have been able to get the the driver loaded and working. Currently I am trying to write a script for accessing public access points, and configuring WEP with my home connection. I hope this helps you in your quest.

L1nuxR0x

Okay, now I feel like an idiot... I just caught the fact that your using a pcmcia wireless card. So, you can pretty much ignore what I just said. :rolleyes:

Ok, So I went diving into the linux-wlan-ng mailing list archives looking for any references to problems like mine, and managed to find ALMOST nothing. The one thing i did find was a reference to issues with pre20 and later versions seemed to have a "problem" with some of their makefiles, and that you can just copy and use the makefiles from pre17, so I gave that a try and managed to get a completely Different set of errors. Searching these in the archives lead me to the plight of another user in the same situation.

Turns out the Makefiles for linux-wlan-ng do not like kernels in the 2.2 family and older. This other user detailed his attempts at manually re-writing the Makefile to get it to compile. After he re-wrote the third Makefile with no success and no follow-ups, I decided to give up and upgrade my kernel. Well, next long story short, I cant install 2.6.9 on my current system, gcc is to old to compile the kernel. So I decided to give up and just download Slackware 10 and start over. Ill post of I can get this card to work under Slackware 10 with the linux-wlan-ng drivers.

Last night I was able to get my SlackWare 10.0 box on the air with WEP running. I found a very good tutorial on its setup here. Hopefully it will help as well. I am using the rc.local script to call one of two scripts that configure the wireless connection, one for the home and one for public access points. I am still working on the latter though. Next step is to upgrade kernel to 2.6, I am currently using 2.4.23.

L1nuxR0x