Wireless Cards under Debian

po0k

Right, I have a Mini-ITX EPIA MII-12000, onboard PCMCIA/Cardbus Adapter (Ricoh R5C476II/R5C485 - working), Netgear MA401A Orinoco-based 11b wireless card.

Reinstalled last night after I flucked the first install with linux-wlan-ng, currently running stock 2.4.18 + some modules, PCMCIA_core module isn't installed so cardmgr can't start. Upgraded to Debian Unstable.
Will be upgrading to 2.6.10 later this evening, with the VIA PadLock AES kernel patch.
I can't use the stock module packages provided by the linux-wlan-ng project as they're for 2.4.24(?) and I need to be running a recent 2.6 kernel to apply the AES patches.
My attempts at compiling the wlan-ng modules failed.
I had installed the 2.6.10, pcmcia-cs and linux-wlan-ng source with the following commands:
user@host:/usr/src/linux$ apt-get source kernel-source-2.6.10
user@host:/usr/src/modules$ apt-get source pcmcia-cs
user@host:/usr/src/modules$ apt-get source linux-wlan-ng

after running ./Configure in /usr/src/modules/linux-wlan-ng it complained that I hadn't got a complete set of kernel source. Am I doing this right?

Do I even need linux-wlan-ng package?

What I'm planning to do is setup a AES-encrypted IPSec tunnel between this box and another machine over a 802.11b WiFi connection. I'd like to lock the connection down as much as I can, making it as "Point-to-Point" as possible.
WEP is insecure, hence my use of IPSec, and the Nehmiah C3 core in the machine has a hardware RNG which can give ~11MByte/sec AES throughput using the patches mentioned above.
I've never had to compile external modules against kernel source before, and despite my RTFMing I'm still stuck. I don't even know if I'm apt-getting the correct way.

Has anyone setup a Prism-based wireless card under Debian?

Apologies for the rough nature of my post.

Syth

You'd probably get a better responce in the UNIX forum.

po0k

I've tried

Actually, a thread on the for-sale forum may have pointed me in the right direction.

I don't think I need linux-wlan-ng for it at all.
the wireless-tools package should sort me out.

scojones

Have a look at ndiswrapper as well.

digitalninja

i'll sell you a cisco card that works straight away in debian for 30 euro bucks.
pm me.

nadir

yeah, I have ndiswrapper working ok, I have a post on it on 'unix forum' but im getting some intermittent connectivity.

fatherdougalmag

I've got a Lucent Orinoco PCMCIA here in my laptop and was fooling around with a couple of live Linux CDs at the weekend. Both Knoppix and Mepis picked it up fine. Just needed to manually configure the ESSID etc. but thereafter I simply used 'pump' to get the IP params via DHCP.

So maybe look at those dist's as a reference.

scojones

I would be very grateful if someone could answer this...

I was setting up my friends wireless card in linux using Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG Driver for Linux (ipw2200). I have sucessfully set up the card, the modules are loaded correctly but the I'm having a DHCP problem, I've set up the ESSID, and the key is blank(mac addy filtering), but it fails to get the DHCP information, the DHCPDISCOVER does not find anything, this is Fedora Core 3.

Last night I was having a chat with a guy and he said he has the exact same problem in Fedora Core 3, but with a different card. Does anyone know what the problem could be? I can give a more detailed description if needed.

fatherdougalmag

What happens if you assign a static IP to the interface and try pinging the DHCP server? Is the DHCP server a PC or a router? If a router, any chance of setting up ethereal or something to sniff?

scojones

Nah, didn't work with a static ip. I fixed it though, well not really, it just decided to start working...