Re: Building zd1211 drivers fore WiFi dongle

On 24 Jun 2008, at 18:02, John M Cohn wrote:

Mr Codger...
Thanks so much rot the lead.. I was able to get the firmware in there.. but I'm not sure what commands I need to do to bring the link up and configure it. Do you have any guidance there ?

When I do an 'ifconfig wlan0 up' it tells me it cant find the device

Thanks again for your help
-jc

John Cohn PhD
IBM Fellow - Systems and Technology Group
tel: 802-769-7676 (t/l 446-), cell: 802-578-0985
asst:Jleigh Howard 802-769-6035 (jleigh@us.ibm.com)
blog: blog.myspace.com/johncohn

<graycol.gif>old.codger@mac.com

old.codger@mac.com
06/23/2008 04:56 PM

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John M Cohn/Burlington/IBM@IBMUS

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Re: Building zd1211 drivers fore WiFi dongle

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I have a wifi dongle working on a slug using Debian Sid. But, I got the firmware fromhttp://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=129083The README says put them in /lib/firmware/zd1211/

As I said I am using Debian Sid on the NSLU2.

You need to get wpasupplicant and wireless-tools

My /etc/network/interfaces contains either

allow-hotplug wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

wpa_ap_scan 1

wpa_scan_ssid 1

wpa_ssid "WPAnet"

# #psk "some password"

wpa_psk e36f5fbf83d5ba33aa52ff13875af7d8dabb5868aa03889704ef5ab3b0e9f65d

wpa_proto WPA2

wpa_key_mgmt WPA-PSK

wpa_pairwise CCMP

wpa_group CCMP

wpa_auth_alg OPEN

allow-hotplug wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

wpa_scan_ssid 1

wpa_ssid "WEPNet"

# #psk "helphelphelps"

wpa_wep_key0 68656c7068656c7068656c7073

wpa_key_mgmt NONE

wpa_group WEP104

wpa_auth_alg SHARED

wpa_wep_tx_keyidx 0

Use wpa_passphrase to generate the wpa_psk string.

I used http://paulschou.com/tools/xlate/ to convert the 13 ascii characters to hex.

you can use: iwlist wlan0 scan

to see if the dongle finds any networks.

To get the wlan0 associated to the access point I used

ifup -v wlan0

ifconfig gives;

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0e:8f:0d:64:ff

inet addr:192.168.1.14 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:41 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:62 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:11589 (11.3 KiB) TX bytes:16301 (15.9 KiB)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-0E-8F-0D-64-FF-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

iwconfig gives

wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"WPAnet"

Mode:Managed Frequency:2.452 GHz Access Point: 00:1A:59:7B:FA:2E

Bit Rate=18 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm

Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B

Encryption key:782C-6F44-3267-FCD0-ADAE-2854-6FE9-1C38 [3]

Link Quality=58/100 Signal level:75/100

Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0

Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

I have experienced some trouble resolving local addresses when the ethernet is not used.

w3m www.google.com works fine, but ping mymac.local (the computer I am ssh'd in with does not )

I also cannot do a ssh root@slug.local from mymac.

I have found a workaround involving running "wpa_cli scan" in /etc/rc.local and

the same one line bash script in /etc/network/if-up.d/zscan

But this only works if you install updated drivers using compat-wireless from http://linuxwireless.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2

and you will need to install via apt-get "linux-headers-2.6.25-2-all-armel" to compile compat-wireless

I have no idea why the above works for me.

Alan