Installation problems with debian

Fri Mar 12 10:41:49 PST 2004

Hello,
I'm relativly new to Linux and Wireless, so please don't call my stupid if
this question is :-)

I want to replace my the default driver for my WLAN-card with the HostAP
(0.2.0) driver, but it doesn't work.

I bought an Allnet ALL0191 WLAN PCI-Adapter which I want to run as an AP
under Debian with a selfcompiled 2.6.3 kernel from kernel.org.

Compilation of the latest HostAP version (0.2.0) worked fine, till I wanted
to replace the orinoco driver which is default for my WLAN-card. As you see
the PCI-card is detected at boottime as eth2 and the orinoco driver is
loaded

gaia:/# dmesg
...
orinoco.c 0.13e (David Gibson <hermes at gibson.dropbear.id.au> and others)
orinoco_pci.c 0.13e (David Gibson <hermes at gibson.dropbear.id.au> & Jean
Tourrilhes <jt at hpl.hp.com>)
Detected Orinoco/Prism2 PCI device at 0000:00:0b.0, mem:0xE3000000 to
0xE3000FFF -> 0xcd14b000, irq:11
Reset done..................................................................
.....................;
Clear Reset.................................................................
.....................;
pci_cor : reg = 0x0 - FFFC2A41 - FFFC284D
eth2: Station identity 001f:0004:0001:0003
eth2: Looks like an Intersil firmware version 1.3.4
eth2: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth2: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth2: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth2: MAC address 00:02:DD:35:84:C4
eth2: Station name "Prism  I"
eth2: ready
...

All modules are at their places and ready to rock. Like I mentionend "make"
and "make install" worked very well without error messages...

gaia:/lib/modules/2.6.3-dhp.040303/kernel/drivers/net/wireless# ls -l
total 780
...
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       117003 Mar 10 00:54 hostap.ko
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         6033 Mar 10 00:54 hostap_crypt_wep.ko
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        62662 Mar 10 00:54 hostap_cs.ko
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        57297 Mar 10 00:54 hostap_pci.ko
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        60059 Mar 10 00:54 hostap_plx.ko
...

After doing the "make install" I loaded the the new modules with "modprobe
hostap_pci" - as described in the README. Doing a lsmod after that reveals,
that the modules are loaded:

gaia:/# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
hostap_pci             53296  0
hostap                117000  1 hostap_pci
...

dmesg says the same:

gaia:/# dmesg
...
hostap: no version for "struct_module" found: kernel tainted.
hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
hostap_pci: 0.2.0 - 2004-02-15 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>)

The fist line saying "no version for struct_module found" should be no harm
in my opinion, as it's only saying, that a thrid-party module (namely
hostap_pci) was loaded. But correct my, if i'm wrong...

Thinking the card is running with the new driver I tried to put it into
master mode, but only this happend:

gaia:/# iwconfig eth2 mode master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device eth2 ; Invalid argument.

I thought it could perhaps be the old firmware which seems to be version
1.3.4 (see dmesg above) and is known to be not very well...

After locking how to flash the cards firmware I tried to determine mine
cards ID with hostap_diag. But this was the only output I got:

gaia:/usr/src/archives/hostap/hostap-utils-0.2.0# ./hostap_diag eth2
Host AP driver diagnostics information for 'eth2'

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_HOSTAPD]: Operation not supported
Could not communicate with the kernel driver.

So the card is still with the orinoco driver, or what? And when it is, how
can I get the component ID for my card, which is needed to find the right
firmware version.

So what went wrong?

There are serveral howtos - unfortunatly most of them in spanish - saying i
got to add something like

alias eth2 hostap_pci

to /etc/modules.conf. But as I'm running Debian the system should insert
this line by itself after doing "update-modules", but it doesn't. And adding
this line by hand also has no effect on the driver loaded on bootup.
Creating a file /etc/modutils/hostap with this content

# mode: 3 = AP, 2 = Station, 1 = Ad-Hoc
options hostap_pci essid=visionsAP channel=7 mode=3

and doing "update-modules" afterwards - as described in an article in a
german computer magazine (c't 07.2003). Only causes this error message

gaia:/# update-modules
/etc/modutils/hostap: line 2: options: command not found
Error while executing /etc/modutils/hostap, aborting

Perhaps you might think the ALL0191 PCI-adapter has not the right chipset,
but you are wrong with that:

gaia:/# lspci
...
00:0b.0 Network controller: Harris Semiconductor Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset
(rev 01)
...

I would be very happy if someone could help my with my problem and tell my
what I am doing wrong.

Lots of thanks in advance,
Daniel Peger.

 ----
|
| Daniel H. Peger
|
| daniel at peger.de
| PGP: 0xB00B31BA
|