MadWifi & WPA under FC3 ( & laptop)

[Dale]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 11:31:35AM +0100, Samuel Díaz García wrote:
> Hello again!
> 
> I have an Atheros A/B/G pccard that I want to use with my FC3 in my laptop.
> 
> In the past I used "ndiswrapper" with a Knoppix distro in the same 
> laptop, but "ndiswrapper" with wpa_supplicant need a long time to 
> authentification process.
> 
> With FC3 I wan't test (another time) the madwifi driver, hoping this 
> solve the long authentification time.
> 
> Using UP2DATE I don't see the madwifi package and didn't see the 
> wpasupplicant package.
> 
> Can anybody help me?
> Will YUM help me downloading these packages?
> Do I need add some source packages for yum or up2date?

As far as I know, the usual way to download madwifi is just to get it from cvs.
To download:
    cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/madwifi co madwifi

That will create a directory named madwifi.  To build and install:

    cd madwifi
    make install

The above installs kernel modules under /lib/modules.
The above works well for me with my Linksys WPC55AG V1.1.  The device
will be called ath0.  Things should just work.

The madwifi driver is reputed to support WPA (in conjunction with
wpa_supplicant, downloaded from elsewhere and installed separately).
However, I have not yet tried that myself.

FWIW, following are some notes I took on my madwifi installation in
case they are helpful...

----------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:

Use "madwifi/ath/if_ath_pci.c v 1.5 2004/11/15" or later, which
includes the a patch that makes madwifi work more-or-less
seamlessly in Fedora Core 3.
    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=139089
    http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=5958719&forum_id=33966

For kudzu, be sure to specify "ignore" out of the available choices
of "configure", "ignore", and "do nothing".

Choice "ignore" means to add the device to /etc/sysconfig/hwconf
as usual, but not to start a configuration utility.  It is good
to do this because kudzu does not presently know how to configure
wireless devices -- it treats them as wired.  The configuration
can be done later by invoking "neat" aka system-config-network.

Use system-config-network as usual for a wireless device:
Select the "device" tab, then click "new".
A window labeled "Add new Device Type" will appear.
In response to "Select Device Type":
    Select "Wireless connection" and click "Forward".
In response to "Select Wireless Device":
    Select "Atheros ... (ath0)" and click "Forward".
In response to "Configure Wireless Connection":
    Mode: Managed (choices are "Auto", "Managed", and "Ad Hoc").
	Perhaps "Auto" would work too.
	Perhaps "Ad Hoc" would work when appropriate.
    SSID: select "auto".
	The other choice is to select "specified" and enter an
	SSID name.  I don't know what benefit there would be to
	do that.

    Channel: (grayed when mode = "Managed"
    Transmit rate: (grayed when mode = "Managed")
	See discussion below of RATE:
    Key: whatever
	A hex string should be preceded with "0x".
	It will be stored in keys_ath0 without the leading "0x".
	If specified to neat without "0x", it's probably munged
	and digested to create a hex key.

RATE in file ifcfg-ath0:
If the value for RATE isn't just right, the following message will be
output on startup (which can safely be ignored):
    Error for wireless request "Set Bit Rate" (8B20) : SET failed
    on device ath0 ; Invalid argument.
This is an error from /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/if-wireless:
    iwconfig ath0 rate $RATE
The message may be avoided by changing ifcfg-ath0's assignment to "RATE="
(which bypasses assignment) or to a legal value, such as:
"Auto", "54M", "54M auto", etc.
See man page iwconfig.