hostapd on mandrake 9.1

[Maxent s.r.o.]

... warning, little longer post ...

Hi, I have never compiled linux kernel, so I'm pretty sure I shouldn't 
post here :) But I'm stuck for a few weeks.

I want to setup linux ap box with eth1 WAN interface and eth0 and wlan0 
bridged.

I originally followed A Linux Wireless Access Point HOWTO 
<http://oob.freeshell.org/nzwireless/LWAP-HOWTO.html> from Simon 
Anderson of NZ-Wireless. I was attracted of precompiled RH9 kernel with 
hostap already included in. But after many days of testing I found that 
not even is this howto partially incomplete but for different thing too. 
Wireless part (AP+client connections) was ok but many different things 
went wrong. I was stuck for first time :)

I decided to go back to Mandrake 9.1 (which I run on several machines 
and am more familiar with) and do everything without any howto. Here we 
begin:

Machine:
MSI KM2M Combo (K7 motherboard with intergrated Savage4 video a VIA 
Rhine II ethernet)
Duron 1200
256MB DDR 333
30GB HDD
Realtek 8139 (for local bridge between wireless and wired lan)
ZCOM XI-626 PCI wireless card (I updated firmware to 1.7.4)

Mandrake 9.1 installed flawlessly (oppose to RH9.0, which had problems 
with integrated Savage4 video, I was forced to vga) and even detected 
all net interfaces including wireless (eth0 - orinoco_pci, eth1 - rhine 
II, eth0 - realtek8139). I updated kernel to 2.4.21.0.25 
<ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake-updates/9.1/RPMS/kernel-2.4.21.0.25mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm> 
from rpm. Then I changed the orinoco_pci driver to hostap_pci (via 
NetConf in KDE), everything went ok so far. I was amused of relative 
simplicity compared to RH9 and started to configure my AP. But problems 
arrived. All iwconfig commands run well (iwconfig wlan0 essid "...", 
etc.) but when I used iwpriv commands, horror arised :)

iwpriv wlan0 maccmd 1

Interface doesn't accept private ioctl...
maccmd (8BF0): Operation not supported

So I installed latest wireless tools 
<ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake-devel/cooker/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/wireless-tools-26-1mdk.i586.rpm> 
from rpm and ... nothing changed. Then I looked around and found latest 
hostap in rpm 
<ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake-devel/cooker/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/hostap-0.0.4-1mdk.i586.rpm> 
and installed it too. No progress still. Time for little research came 
and I recognized that in mentioned hostap rpm are only hostapd files, 
but in
/lib/modules/2.4.21-0.25mdk/kernel/3rdparty/hostap
reside hostap files from original Mandrake installation (hostap_pci 
0.0.0 2002-10-12, etc.).

Now I was really stuck and started to search web for any related info. 
After few days I found that I'm stuck with nothing but questions:

1. I would like to use rather hostapd cuz Jouni said somewhere in 
discussions that IT is the future of hostap. But I wasn't able to find 
any info on how to use that, there is not a one howto for hostapd afaik. 
I'm not even sure if I need hostap_pci for hostapd functionality (cuz in 
mentioned hostap rpm package was only hostapd files, I assume that it 
may not be needed).

2. I want to avoid any compilation if it is possible, so is there any 
way to install latest hostap or hostapd on Mandrake 9.1 from rpm? Or if 
there will be need of hostap compiling, is there requirement only of 
kernel source installed (preferably from rpm) or whole kernel must be 
compiled too?

3. Is there any howto for hostap for linux newbies covering hostapd use? 
It would be a real gem for people like me.


Ok, guys, I'm pretty sure this mail will be no brain for most of you on 
this mailing list and also I'm sure that I'm in some very obvious 
mistake with my approach and there is no need of including any detailed 
info about configuration etc.

But please, don't accuse me of posting to wrong list, I'm stuck and 
tired of all of it and I really need help. Thx alot in advance.

Karel Rericha
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