known good PCI wireless NICs for FC2

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 14:47:08 -0700, Rick Stevens
<rstevens at vitalstream.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Mark Knecht wrote:
> > On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 10:28:51 -0700, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> > <SNIP>
> >
> >>Back in 20 minutes...
> >>
> >
> >
> > Sorry for so many emails. This is all turning out to be a bit too much
> > stream of consciousness...
> >
> > OK, so it took a bit more than 20 minutes, but I've made more headway
> > than in my last go-around with this stuff. I grabbed the .sys file,
> > placed it (for lack of any instructions) in /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5,
> > and then gave the next instruction a try:
> >
> > [root at flash root]# ndiswrapper -l
> > Installed ndis drivers:
> > bcmwl5a driver present, hardware present
> > [root at flash root]#
> >
> > That all looks quite nice. The modprobe step goes fine:
> >
> > [root at flash root]# modprobe ndiswrapper
> > [root at flash root]#
> >
> > The driver seems to be installed:
> >
> > ndiswrapper version 0.11 loaded (preempt=no,smp=no)
> > ndiswrapper: using irq 5
> > divert: allocating divert_blk for wlan0
> > wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:90:4b:4d:e3:e8 using driver bcmwl5a
> > wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP
> > ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5a (Broadcom,07/17/2003, 3.30.15.0) added
> > [root at flash root]#
> >
> > More good results:
> >
> > [root at flash root]# iwconfig
> > lo        no wireless extensions.
> >
> > sit0      no wireless extensions.
> >
> > eth0      no wireless extensions.
> >
> > wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any
> >           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462GHz  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
> >           Bit Rate:54Mb/s   Tx-Power:25 dBm
> >           RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
> >           Encryption key:off
> >           Power Management:off
> >           Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-10 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm
> >           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
> >           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:779   Missed beacon:0
> >
> > [root at flash root]#
> >
> > [root at flash root]# iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
> > [root at flash root]#
> >
> > At this point I don't think I can go further as I'm in the office and
> > my access point is at home, so this will have to wait, but I do have
> > some questions in getting ready for the weekend:
> >
> > 1) Do I need to do anything more than add ndiswrapper to
> > /etc/modprobe.conf to get this far the next time I boot? (I can try
> > this out in a minute but figured I'd ask.)
> 
> No, all you need is "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" in modprobe.conf and away
> you go.  You will need to set up the appropriate stuff in
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0, but that's no biggie.

Humm...this file does not exist. Do I need to create it by hand? Or is
there a Fedora config program that does this? So far I've just done
everything in a terminal...

Knowing me, it might be a biggie. Can you supply the contents of yours
(sans any security info) as an example? Maybe I'm overly worried but
I'm really hoping to get this working tomorrow and I kow you are
mostly Monday-Friday on this list. If the contents are really trivial
then don't bother. (ifcfg-eth0 looks straight forward.) Thanks in
advance.

> 
> > 2) Can I do WEP 128-bit encryption with this? It appears supported in
> > the info above, but does it work? It is the Windows driver
> > (presumably) so I assume all of that is supported?
> 
> Yup.  Remember that if you specify your key in ASCII, the key must
> be prefixed with "s:", e.g. in your ifcfg-wlan0:
> 
>         KEY=s:whateveryourkeyis
> 
> > 3) Anything else I should be aware of?
> 
> Nope.  Remember to set up the ESSID=, CHANNEL= and KEY= stuff and
> you should be good to go.
> 
> Sorry I didn't respond sooner, but I've been busy.  Yes, I neglected
> to tell you that you needed the .inf and .sys files.  DOH!
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
> - VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
> -                                                                    -
> -       "Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."       -
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>