iBook (dual USB 2001) + airport = !@#$!@#%@#$

[Jesse Andrews <jdandr2@uky.edu>]

I am writing in a vain attempt to finally get my airport card to work under 
debianppc on my new ibook.  I know the hardware works (under mac os 9, x) and 
I know all the information for my WAP - ssid "jesse" ...

I am using the 2.4.8 kernel.

My WAP does NAT with 192.168.0.1 being the WAP's address, and the gateway, ...
My static ip for the built-in wired port is 192.168.0.101 (eth0)
my static ip for the airport wireless is 192.168.0.69 (eth1)

ping 192.168.0.1 works when eth0 is up.
ping 192.168.0.1 doesn't when eth1 is in use :(

Some funny things:
My WAP reports that its mac address is xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:31 while iwconfig says 
that it is xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:32.  Ok, that could be a major problem, but I don't 
know....

I initialize the airport doing:
	modprobe airport
	ifup eth1 

and my /etc/network/interfaces has:
	iface eth1 inet static 
	address 192.168.0.69 
	netmask 255.255.255.0 
	network 192.168.0.0 
	broadcast 192.168.0.255 
	up route add default gw 192.168.0.1

iwconfig eth1 reports:
eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"jesse"  Nickname:"blah"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437GHz  Access Point: 00:50:18:06:96:32
          Bit Rate=11Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:3/3
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:23/92  Signal level:-72 dBm  Noise level:-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  invalid crypt:0  invalid misc:0

	(notice low link quality, signal level, and noise level)

cat /proc/network/wireless
	Inter-| sta-|   Quality        |   Discarded packets
	 face | tus | link level noise |  nwid  crypt   misc
	  eth1: 0000   22.  183.  161.       0      0      0

	(notice the signal, noise are now high!)

when I try to ping with just my airport enabled, it adds some bytes to TX in 
ifconfig (like normal) but so far I have transfered 26.6Kb via mostly pinging 
and the RX is only  738b and no ping has EVER been sucessful.

I have check the ssid on the WAP and it is "jesse" (with the case being 
that).  I don't have WEP enabled (no use until I get normal working!)... 

ifconfig eth1
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:30:65:1B:3F:6A
          inet addr:192.168.0.69  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:3 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:178 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:738 (738.0 b)  TX bytes:27340 (26.6 Kb)
          Interrupt:57 Base address:0xc000

lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
airport                 3072   1
orinoco                32304   0  [airport]
hermes                  5328   0  [airport orinoco]
af_packet              15744   0  (autoclean)
unix                   19488  98  (autoclean)

I know my WAP uses channel 6.  but doing
iwconfig eth1 channel 6 gives:
SIOCSIWFREQ: Operation not supported                                         

using auto or 2Mbps for the rate doesn't help....  

I read something somewhere about hermes.conf file...  This may only be for 
compiling, but I did a search find / | grep hermes.conf and it turned up 
nothing.

I disconnected eth0 and ifconfig eth0 down and then brought up eth1 (airport) 
and pinged the WAP (192.168.0.1) and with the WAP 6 inches from my box the 
WLAN led (wireless activity light) never blinked!!!!!!

Arg!

Anyone know anything that can help?

Desperately,
Jesse Andrews