Slack and Atheros.

[sclebo05]

A few quick questions.

This is my first wireless venture in linux. i think i am missing something simple

I have a smc2335w 802.11a/b card. in accordance to my research, i CVS myself a copy of the atheros madwifi drivers. they compile and install just fine under my slack9.1 fresh install.

i have the wireless tools tgz installed also.

my issue is this: if i do a 'ifconfig ath0 up' and then a n 'iwlist ath0 scan' i can see my Access Point listed! i do a 'iwconfig ath0 essid "xxx"' and 'iwpriv ath0 mode 1' and i can't surf.

the only thing that looks strange is when i do an lsmod, my ath_hal and wlan modules are loaded, but my ath_pci is "unused". what does that mean?

i think i have all the pieces here, its just the configuration that stumps me :(

[sclebo05]

Well, it took some messing around, but I got it. My access point is 802.11a, but this card does BOTH A and B so it should be the same.

To configure my Atheros 5211 Based SMC2335W wireless card on a Dell 1100 Inpiron running Slackware 9.1, I did the following:

For DHCP:

I installed the package madwifi-20030802.tgz This can be found a few places yet, and unlike the latest CVS of the project, actually compiles.

installpkg madwifi-20030802.tgz
My directory was at /madwifi-2.......02 "cd" into this directory.
compile the drivers with a 'make' and 'make install'.
Here I rebooted, but you could load the drivers manually "modprobe drivername"
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 down (turning off ethernet, won't work otherwise apperently)
/sbin/ifconfig ath0 up (turns on the device)
iwlist ath0 scan (shows the available networks)
iwconfig ath0 essid "Pointname" (connects to network)
dhcpcd ath0
"iwconfig ath0" shows info about your wireless connection. "/sbin/ifconfig" shows IP, etc.

...... and it worked. for static IP, I did the following:

compiled drivers as above....
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 down
/sbin/ifconfig ath0 192.168.xxx.yyy up (sets your IP address)
route add default gw 192.168.www.zzz (sets default gateway)
added "nameserver 192.168.rrr.sss" to /etc/resolv.conf
iwlist ath0 scan (shows available networks)
iwconfig ath0 essid "Pointname" (connects to network)
"iwconfig ath0" shows info about your wireless connection. "/sbin/ifconfig" shows IP, etc.

.........and it just might work.

I am in no way a wireless expert, but these steps worked for me. I have seen a lot of posts about this chipset, card, slackware, etc, but no complete solutions. It is late, and I copied this info from my messy notes. Post any comments and i will try them out and verify that they work. Hope this helps someone. :cool:

[acid45]

dhcpcd ath0

Could I please see your /etc/dhcpd.conf file. My configuration doesn't seem to work I keepp getting a weird, non-erronous message. Well it's an erronuous message but it starteds with a copyright, which I can't read because | more doesn't seem to work, some ISC info and a line that says I need.

ddns-update-type in my /etc/dhcpd.conf file. So I put the following...

ddns-update-type interim

Soo... I type dhcpd ath0 AGAIN and I get the same mumbo jumbo copyright/error only this time it says

Device: ath0 not found

Using ifconfig and iwconfig I can ses this as a wireless adapter, with all the kicks and giggles. It seems to be working properly, poorly but properly. I have:

signal: 10 to 16/94 and a
signal level: -80bBm to -83 dBm
noise level: -90dBm

I can post the rest but I'm not good with linux and I barely know where anything is so I'd have to type it all out... That means pen and paper and I can barely read my own writing. It's something I try to avoid :P I'm fairly good at reading others code I just don't know where to find it is what I'm trying to say :P Some things, like commented config files I can't understand some of but that's expected for config files I don't know what they do :P I have used the command

ifconfig eth0 down

to turn it off but no luck.

Anyway if you could post that I would be very happy to see WTF I'm doing so wrong that dhcpd can't see my ath0 but everything else, that I've used, can...

Thanks

[sclebo05]

Its blank. Well actually, i have a few lines of comments at the top, but it is completely void of any configuration.

[acid45]

So was mine, and when I ran dhcpd ath0 it said I needed a ddns-update-style configuration line in there. I added it:
[code]
ddns-update-style interim;
[/cond]
and then I get my other error/informational messages

Wrote 0 leases to lease file
ath0: not found

I find this very odd...this is starting to look like a non-config problem but it might be I don't know.

Thanks for the info...