wireless on laptop with Redhat 9

[lepricaun]

hi guys,

i'm trying to get my wlan to work on my laptop, i'm using a dualboot system with windows xp and redhat 9.

with windows xp everything works fine, but with redhat 9 i can't get it to work!
i've been working on it for 3 weeks now, and i'm really getting tired of this!

here's what i've done so far:
dowloaded and installed ndiswrapper-0.8-rc2 (also tried ndiswrapper-0.8, 0.4 and 0.6)
everything goes well until i load the module:

i got this error in dmesg:

ndiswrapper version 0.8-rc2 loaded
ndiswrapper adding w22n51.sys
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 01:02.0
divert: allocating divert_blk for wlan0
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0e:35:08:eb:a5 using driver w22n51.sys
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
wlan0: getting configuration failed (C0000001)

and this is my current ifcfg-wlan0 file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ :

DEVICE=wlan0
MODE=Managed
ESSID=wireless
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
KEY=open
IPADDR=
NETMASK=
NETWORK=at_home
BROADCAST=
ONBOOT=yes
NAME=wireless
PEERDNS=yes

as you can see i'm not using WEP at the moment and mac filtering is also disabled.

but somehow i still can't access my network, i don't even get an IP!

i know it is the right driver, cause when i use a static ip with a netmask and broadcast, i can ping the static ip like a loop, also the output of "ndiswrapper -l" gives a present state.

i've read almost a dozen tutorials, howto's etc, about configuring wireless on linux, but this is the best i can come up with!

so if someone please can give me some advise, i would be extremely happy!!


thanks in advance

[Mangoti]

What wireless device are U using?

[D0pp139an93r]

I never really like using drivers like that. Nowadays, many of the WLAN drivers are available for Linux, check SourceForge and the manufacturer's site.


Also.. I don't know how new you are to Linux.... There may be a kernel driver already included in your system... It may just need to be loaded.

[lepricaun]

Well, there is not yet a working driver for my device (intel 2200bg) from sourceforge, but i did manage to get it to work with ndiswrapper since yesterday

only problem now is that i can't use WEP and dhcp

this is what i've did:

loaded the driver with ndiswrapper

created an alias:
alias wlan 'modprobe ndiswrapper;iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed;iwconfig wlan0 essid wireless;ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.112 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.254;route add default gw 192.168.1.1'

then added 'nameserver 192.168.1.1' to /etc/resolv.conf

and then ran "wlan"

this works, but as soon as i try "iwconfig wlan0 key restricted s:<key>" or "iwconfig wlan0 key restricted <key>" (note the "s:" before the key) , i get an error message.

also with the config file "ifcfg-wlan0", as soon as i use it to use dhcp the NIC doesn't connect to the router

how should i solve this??

[KeyserSoze]

Originally posted here by lepricaun
Well, there is not yet a working driver for my device (intel 2200bg) from sourceforge, but i did manage to get it to work with ndiswrapper since yesterday

Did you try to use the driver here: http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/ ?

The requirements seem kind of minimal. I was just curious.

[thehorse13]

I had a bitch of a time with WiFi on RedHat too. I upgraded the version of pcmcia_cs (found on sourceforge), upgraded to the newest driver release from Cisco and after some tweaking with the Cisco ACU, I was off and running.

Have you installed the newest card services RPM?

[lepricaun]

well keysersoze, as i can see now it is working, BUT

Linux (of course) with a 2.6.4+ kernel [link]. See README.ipw2200 for information on specific options required to be enabled in the kerne

not with the default redhat kernel though..

but that's not the problem anymore, i've deleted redhat, and installed slackware 9.1 and FC2, with slackware it is working with ndiswrapper 0.8, just as with redhat, but with FC2, when you "modprobe ndiswrapper" the system hangs completely, this is with the default kernel, not with the upgrade...
but like i said in my last post, the main problem is now getting dhcp and WEP to work..

thanks for your reaction though...

as for thehorse13: i think i did, i did do a update with redhat using up2date, which gave me a download of around 260 mb's, so i think i did do that, not sure though...

[KeyserSoze]

Originally posted here by lepricaun
well keysersoze, as i can see now it is working, BUT not with the default redhat kernel though..

but that's not the problem anymore, i've deleted redhat, and installed slackware 9.1 and FC2, with slackware it is working with ndiswrapper 0.8, ......but like i said in my last post, the main problem is now getting dhcp and WEP to work..

Well, there's no time like the present to try that first kernel compile....it's really not that difficult, and I think it might solve your problem. However, it's your call. Good luck!

[lepricaun]

well, i did recompile my kernel a couple of weeks ago on my desktop, but this wasn't such a success either... i am playing ut2004 on it, and with the custom kernel it ran a hell of a lot slower then with the standard one

this is even so when i just use the standard settings when you first do a make xconfig or make menuconfig. so before i know why that is, i'm not trying another compile..

but i'm working on it and i will find out

[KeyserSoze]

Well, as far is why it ran slower with the stock kernel, it could be a number of things: a module left out, a change to your XF86Config, etc...
But at least you have the right attitude!