use wifi driver from mepis on slack.

Old_Fogie · 03-23-2006, 03:40 PM

Hi all,

I loaded in mepis really fast on my laptop to see if it would do wireless with my hawking card as the mepis had a late release kernel.

It does.

Now i want to see what "driver" mepis is using so I can write it down for myself,and then restore my laptop from an image that I burned to cd's of slackware on this laptop; as slackware truly rules on this laptop.

Would I be able to see if this driver is or is not available in the newer kernels. Kind of like a driver's listing included with the kernels.

The image is the stock 2.4 kernel from slack 10.2 and I'm thinking of compiling in 2.6.10 which I was able to put into my desktop.

Any ideas Thank you.

Alien Bob · 03-23-2006, 04:21 PM

You're kind of vague with the specifics. What type of Hawking card for instance?

You can look at the output of the following commands and try to guess what is specific to the wireless card.

Code:

lsmod
lspci -v

and possibly by inspecting

Code:

dmesg | less

right after booting.

Try to copy that output on a USB stick or use the network connection in mepis to copy the captured results to another machine, then post what you think is relevant.
Chances are big that the driver for the card is not part of the Linux kernel (not even a recent 2.6 kernel), unless it is an old card, or one supported by for instance the prism54 (2.4, 2.6 kernels) or ipw2100/ipw2200 driver (2.6 kernels)

Eric

Old_Fogie · 03-23-2006, 06:22 PM

thanks for the input bob. I'm gonna try it out after dinner.

the card is

1. Hawking Technology
M/N : HWC546
Card is Revision T (very important according to their site)
This is a pcmcia card. I'd prefer to use this cuz it fits nicely into the laptop. But if i have to use the other that's listed below then no biggie.

I did some googling on this card and supposedly the chip is manufactured by one company and sold to many distributors and that this card can simulate a Linksys TNE1100 or something like that.

thanks to CWWilson I can upgrade kernels now in slackware, and I suspect? not sure that this is being used as prism in the Mepis.

i looked at the wiki, but they dont have this card "hawking" in their.

i searched by FCC number and it comes up as the Linksys. now i read on some old posts in forums for early versions of 2.4 kernels people got the TNE100 to work with ndiswrapper, but I don't believe the ndiswrapper is even loaded with the mepis from the KDE process program app.

Thanks again.

cwwilson721 · 03-23-2006, 07:20 PM

If it's a Prism chip, (I have one too!) use wlan-ng. Download/compile according to the instructions included. Prism support must be compiled in (mine are modules).

Then you get to configure....

After that, I was having probs w/eth0 hanging when trying to get a DHCP address, when I had no ethernet cable plugged in. Here is the solution: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...53#post2137853

It allows me to have my ethernet not plugged in, then when I do, it gets an address and viola!

I edited rc.inet2 to try to load the wlan0 drivers because for some reason, it wouldn't initialize correctly after using those scripts. I just added

Code:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_start

and it worked like a charm (If you don't have your card plugged in, it won't do anything)
I used all the files/programs/scripts he had on there, and made them all executable. His instructions are VERY GOOD

Alien Bob · 03-24-2006, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwwilson721

I edited rc.inet2 to try to load the wlan0 drivers because for some reason, it wouldn't initialize correctly after using those scripts. I just added

Code:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_start

and it worked like a charm (If you don't have your card plugged in, it won't do anything)

I used all the files/programs/scripts he had on there, and made them all executable. His instructions are VERY GOOD

Yeah, those are my scripts. Thank you for your enthusiasm and advocacy :-)
Can you tell me a little more about why you had to edit rc.inet2 in order to get your wireless working again? Maybe I can improve my scripts if you stumbled over a bug. Mail me at my email address if you don't want to clutter this thread. I can always post back the results.

Cheers, Eric

Old_Fogie · 03-24-2006, 07:29 AM

Hi all,

In windows, 98, ME, or 2000 I was never able to get this prism card to do DHCP.

In Mepis DHCP for this card does not work either.

But I have no problem just manually entering in the IP that I will use here at the house. I'm not going to be using wifi hotspots or anything.

CW when you say:

"If it's a Prism chip, (I have one too!) use wlan-ng. Download/compile according to the instructions included. Prism support must be compiled in (mine are modules)."

Do you mean to use apt-get or similar to download the "wlan-ng"?

Alien Bob · 03-24-2006, 08:00 AM

There is of course a linux-wlan-ng package present in the /extra directory of the Slackware package tree; for instance here in case you don't want to build your own from source.

But I looked around, and it seems the Hawking "revision T" indicates that it is powered bt a TI 1130 chip (which you can verify by downloading the Windows driver and checking the filenames - you'll see "t1130_XP.sys" for instance). This chipset is supported by the
ACX100 project at Sourceforge. They have a Slackware related Wiki page at http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/D...list/Slackware

Looks like that is the way to go. Also, ndiswrapper should work with your card. The acx100 driver is known to be crash-sensitive at times due to the fact that the driver is reverse-engineered (because Texas Instruments refuses to co-operate with the Linux community).

Eric

Old_Fogie · 03-25-2006, 02:54 AM

Hi all,

Right now this laptop has the 2.4 kernel in it. I haven't put the testing 2.6 kernel in here yet.

I was not able to verify the driver by the boot process you mentioned Bob, but Mepis had 2.5 prism folder and the files were listed by date and time in KDE as last accessed as the same time as I had the card in.

So I'm thinking it's going to use the 2.5 prism.

My question is:

Should I put the testing/2.6 kernel in.

Then use pkgtool to put that wlan-ng you linked me to in and see if i can get it to work.

Then if that does not work try out the ACX100 project/wiki.

Sound like a good process to you?

Thanks again.

Old_Fogie · 03-25-2006, 03:46 AM

I have this pc imaged, so i tried out the way I typed there.

I installed the test kernel, modules, alsa then downloaded the wlan_ng and installed with pkgtool.

Rebooted the pc.

LSPCI shows the card as the Texas Instruments ACX111 54mbs just like Mepis showed it too.

cwwilson721 · 03-25-2006, 11:26 AM

Read Alien Bob's post about what chipset/prog to use (Trust him. He knows his stuff...Wireless,networking,and Slackware)

Old_Fogie · 03-25-2006, 11:42 AM

Oh I'll be sure to read Bob's stuff.

Last nite as was just at the end of my rope. You know how it is I'm sure.

cwwilson721 · 03-25-2006, 12:11 PM

Yes, I do....Just got off a 1100 mile one day drive. I was pretty wore out too....lol

cwwilson721 · 03-25-2006, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alien Bob

Can you tell me a little more about why you had to edit rc.inet2 in order to get your wireless working again? Maybe I can improve my scripts if you stumbled over a bug. Mail me at my email address if you don't want to clutter this thread. I can always post back the results.

Cheers, Eric

Umm....No, I cannot. Your profile does not allow that, and can't find one on your homepage. Send me one, I'll zip you one right back

Old_Fogie · 03-27-2006, 11:52 AM

Hi Eric.

Ok I have the default slack install then put in testing kernel.

imaged pc so i can restore.

went to http://acx100.sourceforge.net/wiki/D...list/Slackware

to use as my guide.

I extracted the acx driver to the /usr/src/acx folder as they suggest.

then I run this in console:

make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd`

console returns to me:

make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.13/build: No such file or directory. STop.

I tried by removing the `uname -r` and just putting in 2.6.13 and get:

make: entering directory `/lib/modules/2.6.13'
make: *** No rule to make target `/build'. Stop.
make: Leaving directory `/lib/modules/2.6.13'
bash-3.00#

and when i run "uname -r" in console I do get 2.6.13

So for the time being I'm going to throw Mepis on here; compile a new kernel so the pc has some life to it vs. the default kernel with all the overhead; and just wait till' slack comes out with newer version.

Thanks for you help tho I do appreciate it.

Alien Bob · 03-27-2006, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Old_Fogie

Hi Eric.

Ok I have the default slack install then put in testing kernel.

make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.13/build: No such file or directory. STop.

Did you install the kernel sources for the 2.6.13 kernel? The /lib/modules/2.6.13/build is a link that points to the directory where the linux kernel source tree was located at the time of building. Pat's kernel source for the 2.6.13 kernel is /usr/src/linux-2.6.13

Eric