HostAP and WPA2 with Intersil Prism card

[Tom Simnett]

On Wednesday 13 December 2006 11:09, Alex Pounds wrote:
> On Tue, December 12, 2006 3:40 pm, Dave Neuer wrote:
> > I'm new here too, and probably reall don't know what I'm talking
> > about. That caveat aside:
> >
> > I just spent the last couple of days slaving over my Belkin Prism 2.5
> > card and Debian desktop, trying to get it to work with my WPA-enabled
> > router also. I managed to finally get it to "sort of" work by updating
> > the firmware on the card using prism2_srec (which comes with
> > hostap-utils) and then running the normal debian "interfaces" way w/
> > wpa_supplicant and the hostap kernel driver. So it seems like it is
> > possible to get it working without running hostapd.
>
> Hello,
>
> Could I get some more details from you regarding your Debian setup? I too
> am running Debian, and spent last night trying to update my firmware. I'm
> using a 2.6.17 kernel (the kernel-image-2.6.17-2-686 package, I think -
> this is all off the top of my head) and the hostap-utils to provide
> prism2_srec, etc. I've downloaded the latest firmware, but when I try to do
> a "dry run" I get a message that prism2_srec couldn't read the wlan card's
> PDA, and telling me I need to have a certain config option
> (PRISM2_DOWNLOAD_*, perhaps?) enabled in my hostap_config.h. I get the same
> message if I use the -r option to try and pop the firmware in RAM.
>
> I did presume that the hostap modules didn't have this option enabled, but
> now I'm starting to think it may be something else. Did you have to futz
> around and build your own kernel to get it working, or are you using a
> Debian stock kernel?
>
> Apologies for being vague about the error messages, by the way - the laptop
> in question is at home, and I am not.

I am having a similar problem on a laptop of mine - I kind of gave up because 
I'm getting a new laptop in a month or so anyway, but I wanted to outline the 
problem I am having.

What I understand is that versions of the prism firmware lower than 0.5.6 iirc 
don't support wpa, where higher versions do, but versions above 0.7.4 are 
unstable.

I have been unable to update the firmware using the hostap tools that were 
designed to do so, as they just don't recognise the card and its parameters, 
even though the card is actually found, and the relevant drivers loaded.

Was support for firmware updates removed in an earlier version of hostap?

Thanks,

Tom
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