configuring wireless connection - beginner

[Jay Strauss]

Jouni, again thanks for the help so far

> If you have a PCI/mini-PCI version of Prism2.5/3 card, it should be
> enough to just load the hostap_pci kernel module with modprobe.

Ok, I know how to do this.  But it seems to be loading without me doing 
anything:

hydrogen:~# lsmod | grep hostap
hostap_pci             59984  0
hostap                124904  1 hostap_pci

> The station firmware version (v1.3.3) you are using is too old for
> WPA support which makes wpa_supplicant refuse to use this card. In
> other words, you would need to download a firmware upgrade to get
> v1.7.0 or newer station firmware.

This might be a problem. I just searched IBMs website for firmware 
updates and I only found 1, dated 2003/05/19, firmware version 
1.04.02.00, which I suspect based on it's release date will be too old, 
although I admit don't know.  Furthermore its only offered as a windows 
update exe.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-40236

I found a site: http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/ (which you are 
referenced) which has links to other more recent versions of intersil 
firmware.

I'm a bit lost as to what my next step is.

- Do I need to update the station firmware only?
- Do I need to update primary firmware & station firmware?
- Where would you suggest I find these updates for my card?

Thanks again
Jay




Jouni Malinen wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 10:42:50PM -0500, Jay Strauss wrote:
> 
> 
>>At this point I thought I was getting somewhere.  so I changed my
>>/etc/pcmcia/config file and added:
>>
>>device "hostap_pci"
>>   class "network" module "hostap_pci"
> 
> 
> hostap_pci is not used with PC Cards and as such, this should not be in
> cardmgr configuration. If you have a PCI/mini-PCI version of Prism2.5/3
> card, it should be enough to just load the hostap_pci kernel module with
> modprobe. How this done properly depends on the distribution used.
> 
> 
>>hydrogen:~# wpa_supplicant -d -Dhostap -ieth0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
> 
> 
> If the interface is still eth0, I would guess you are still using
> Orinoco driver, not Host AP driver.
> 
> 
>>hostap_pci: 0.3.7 - 2005-02-12 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>)
>>hostap_pci: Registered netdevice wifi0
> 
> 
>>wifi0: NIC: id=0x8013 v1.0.0
>>wifi0: PRI: id=0x15 v1.0.5
>>wifi0: STA: id=0x1f v1.3.3
> 
> 
>>wifi0: registered netdevice wlan0
> 
> 
> However, this here is looking much more like Host AP driver. Please note
> that the interface name here is wlan0..
> 
> The station firmware version (v1.3.3) you are using is too old for WPA
> support which makes wpa_supplicant refuse to use this card. In other
> words, you would need to download a firmware upgrade to get v1.7.0 or
> newer station firmware.
>