Advice on hostap with Red Hat 9 and/or Fedora Core 1?

[Pavel Roskin]

On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Mark G. Spencer wrote:

> I would like to try using hostap however.  I installed a hostap rpm on
> my Mandrake 9.2 laptop, and as far as I could tell, it didn't *do*
> anything and the hostap instructions didn't make sense as I was using an
> rpm.

Make sure you can load the module by "modprobe hostap_cs".  If you cannot,
you need to recompile hostap.

You need to put hostap.conf to /etc/pcmcia/ and make sure you don't have
other /etc/pcmcia/*.conf files that bind your card to orinoco_cs.  Then
restart cardmgr or just reboot.  "cardctl ident" prints information
for your card.  More information about this should be in PCMCIA HOWTO.

> So anyway .. I'm building a new laptop using either Red Hat 9 or Fedora
> Core 1.  Are there any special things I need to be aware of trying to
> get hostap running for a Prism/2 card on either of these?

Red Hat 9 comes with unconfigured kernel, so you should copy corresponding
config* file from /boot to /usr/src/linux/.config and run "make oldconfig"
in /usr/src/linux before compiling hostap.  You need kernel-source
installed.

I was told the issue was worked around in Raw Hide, which packages
/lib/modules/*/build directories with some headers and .config file.  So
maybe you won't need to configure the kernel with Fedora.  Please post you
experience.

> Is there some kind of document that explains exactly what needs to be
> done to get hostap functional from a standard or full install of either
> RH or Fedora

Sorry, I'm not aware of such document.

> (basically, how do I kill the orinoco.cs driver that is running by
> default and replace it with hostap)?

See above.  Normally installing hostap.conf should be enough.

> I'm hoping the included documentation is enough, but I ran into nothing
> but pain trying to get wlan-ng working on any of my laptops.

It helps if you provide details and complain in the right mailing list.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin