HostAP Digest, Vol 6, Issue 7

[Ged Haywood]

Hello there,

On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 RobertKleinschmager at gmx.net wrote:


Compile hostap_pci

> data:/usr/src/hostap-0.0.4# make pci

It's not really a very good idea building things as root in /usr/src.

Put things you want to build in a directory owned by an unprivileged
user, build in there and only install (as root), (and if you want to),
when you're happy that everything went well.

> Makefile:38: WARNING: No kernel PCMCIA support found and PCMCIA_PATH is not defined
> [snip]
> modprobe give following messages (of course)
> depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.18/net/hostap_pci.o
> depmod:         yield
> make: *** [install_pci] Error 1

I doubt it's a compiler problem, I have built hostap with gcc 2.95,
3.2.2 and 3.2.3 on Linux although I think I did have some trouble with
3.2.2 - I can't remember what, but nothing like this.  There are at
least three other possilbilities:

1. Your hostap compilation is finding the wrong kernel sources.

I don't *think* this is the case here but I can't tell for sure. The
solution would be to put the kernel sources where they will be found,
or to tell the hostap make where they are.

2. You don't have a full set of kernel sources in /usr/src.

Some systems are distributed with a smaller set of header files
in /usr/src because they aren't expected to be used for development.
I don't *think* this is the case here either (but again I can't tell)
because I'm guessing that you built your kernel in /usr/src which means
that it's all there.

The best solution would be to move all your sources (*not* the things
that were already there when your whole system was first built) from
/usr/src into another place as described above, and start the build
again making sure the right sources are used.  I'd do that anyway.

3. You need to rebuild your kernel with PCMCIA support.

This is my best guess.

Go back to the directory in which you compiled it, run 'make menuconfig',
and from the menus there select the options which allow the kernel to work
with PCMCIA cards.  Save the new .config when you exit the config menus, 
run 'make dep', 'make bzImage' (or whatever kind of kernel image you like)
and 'make modules'.  Then su to a root shell, install your new kernel and
also do 'make modules_install'.  Reboot to test that it all works.

That ought to fix it.  To be really careful you ought to read the docs
about compiling your kernel when you've patched it - look for 'mrproper'
in the kernel README in the top-level directory of the kernel sources.
You are going to be patching your kernel when you build hostap.

> Please Help. I think, there is nothing i can do anymore.

You could read some more documentation, but there is a lot of it. :)

And there could be mistakes in this of course.

73,
Ged.