Re: Wireless networking issues -- Netgear WG311T and Sarge with kernel 2.6.8

[Angelina Carlton <brat@magma.ca>]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 11:43:25PM +0200, Tim Kynerd wrote:

> On advice I got from alt.os.linux.debian, I just now installed the 2.6.8 
> kernel and tried again. Now there is an interface called "ath0" (the 
> wireless card has an Atheros chipset, hence the name of the interface), 
> but somehow it doesn't seem to be connected to the hardware -- among 
> other things, there are messages coming through during boot where the 
> system tries to initialize the ath0 interface, but it says, "No such 
> device"; and when I open the graphical "Networking" tool and try to 
> activate the ath0 interface, the first attempt fails (the interface is 
> immediately deactivated again), and the second attempt locks up the 
> Networking tool. Oops.
> 
> And there's no /proc/pci file under this kernel, so I can't check that.
> 
> Any advice on resolving this?
> 

Hi Tim,

I have that card running on Debian and a 2.6.8 kernel
The drivers should show in lsmod:

$lsmod | grep ath

ath_pci                56096  0
ath_rate_onoe           8584  1 ath_pci
wlan                  106588  4 wlan_wep,ath_pci,ath_rate_onoe
ath_hal               148560  2 ath_pci

If not you need to install them... (do this as root)

I followed the instructions from this site:
http://www.packetpro.com/~peterson/linux-netgear_wg311t_pci.html

First download with cvs:
root@mgmt:~# cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/madwifi co madwifi

build:
root@mgmt:~# cd madwifi
root@mgmt:~# make
root@mgmt:~# make install

load the modules:
root@mgmt:~# /sbin/modprobe wlan
root@mgmt:~# /sbin/modprobe ath_hal
root@mgmt:~# /sbin/modprobe ath_pci

Then edit /etc/network/interfaces to look like:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
#auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

# wg311t wireless card (new primary card)
auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid  SOMEESSIDNAME
wireless-channel 6
wireless-key SOMESECRETKEY



once /etc/network/interfaces has been edited, bring up the network:
root@mgmt:~# /sbin/ifconfig ath0 up

This is assuming you have dhcp of course, if not: man interfaces :-)

good luck!

-- 
Angelina Carlton