FedoraCore4 - Wireless issues?

I wasn't sure whether to post this here, or in the wireless forums, so after some thought I decided here made more sense (to me).

Building a carputer... so far I've:

• Built a chassis for in-dash installation.
• Installed PC components into above chassis.
• Installed Fedora Core 4 (fancy redhat).
• Compiled and installed rt2500 drivers for linksys 54G wireless card.
• Compiled and installed 3m touchscreen driver (after fixing it grrr)
• Successfully established a wireless connection from my pickup to my neighbor's wireless network :D.

So far so good. Unfortunately, I find manually trying to make a wireless connection distracting while driving, talking on a cell phone while "standing" in a parking lot, and so on.

So I guess I'm looking for a more automatic "I found this, so I will connect to this" type of linux/FC4 software, which will require less interaction from me.

I experimented with kismet however I just couldn't get it working for whatever reason.

What software do you guys use (on linux) for searching for available wifi hot spots? I did a search here, but didn't find anything terribly obvious.

Thanks in advance. I and my truck thank you :D

Frederic

You may want to have a look at the code for Silverwolf on my site (silverwolf.intuitionsys.com) to see what I'm doing (it does what you want).

One question I have though is are you sure rt2500 is the correct driver for your LinkSys card? I used to use a 54G variant and the only driver available was ndiswrapper. I use rt2500 myself but it's for an Edimax card.

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Originally Posted by intuitionsys

You may want to have a look at the code for Silverwolf on my site (silverwolf.intuitionsys.com) to see what I'm doing (it does what you want).

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I just browsed through there, very slick. I'll grab the code after this reply and see if I can start to pull the wifi-hunting component out. Thank you.

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Originally Posted by intuitionsys

One question I have though is are you sure rt2500 is the correct driver for your LinkSys card? I used to use a 54G variant and the only driver available was ndiswrapper. I use rt2500 myself but it's for an Edimax card.

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I've managed to enjoy connectivity with the linksys card using both the serialmonkey driver as well as the ralink "reference" drivers on their website. As far as use, and performance, I can't tell the difference. I'm actually using the linksys card right now to post this message, while attached to my neighbor's wifi :D

Interesting.

I had the card working fine with FC2 and FC3, using either the RaLink or the serialmonkey drivers, and now with FC4, it absolutely does not work. The driver loads okay (rt2500.ko) but iwconfig doesn't allow it to connect. after a few attempts, iwlist will list my neighbor's network, some of the time.

Very weird.

Are you using the RT2500STA.dat file to configure your card or Fedora's own infrastructure? Sorry, I'm not familiar with Fedora. SuSE uses sysconfig entries for setting up the card and the network but I found it obtuse to use with my rt2500 based card. Since I've moved to Gentoo, I've been using the .dat files to configure the card at module load time with very few problems.

What Silverwolf does is keep a database of "known networks" that require security information which on the highest level are simply a collection of the .dat files required for those networks. It scans the airwaves at regular intervals with iwlist and allows you to select a secure network if you have that network in your database (referred to by the MAC address of that network's wireless router). For hotspots that are wide open, it uses a generic .dat file that will work with any wide open network, as long as they support DHCP.

Thank you for the reply.

No, I wasn't using the .dat file for configuration, I instead did the "make" then "make install-fedora" expecting it to work more or less.

I must admit my Linux skills barely exceed "signing on". Part of my intention is to learn Linux and become comfortable with it as well.

>>Gentoo, I've been using the .dat files to configure the card
>>at module load time with very few problems.

2.6.x kernel with Gentoo?

>>generic .dat file that will work with any wide open network,
>>as long as they support DHCP.

Gotcha... I'll see if I can figure this out. I was trying to use "ifup wlan0" and wifiscanner.x.x.x.x.rpm to do this initially.

I did download Silverwolf, but it wouldn't compile since I couldn't get QT working. I compiled it and installed it, but it went "somewhere" and not part of the path yet since I'm unsure where it went.

I'll figure it out :D

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Originally Posted by frederic

No, I wasn't using the .dat file for configuration, I instead did the "make" then "make install-fedora" expecting it to work more or less.

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That's 90% of your problem right there then. Just to see how well it works, you can copy a .dat file with the necessary info to /etc/Wireless/RT2500STA.dat, then rmmod rt2500 and modprobe rt2500. Your network config for /dev/ra0 does not need to contain any wireless setup (nor should it).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frederic

I must admit my Linux skills barely exceed "signing on". Part of my intention is to learn Linux and become comfortable with it as well.

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You have to start somewhere :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frederic

2.6.x kernel with Gentoo?

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Yes, 2.6.13.4 to be precise.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frederic

Gotcha... I'll see if I can figure this out. I was trying to use "ifup wlan0" and wifiscanner.x.x.x.x.rpm to do this initially.

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There are a fair number of tools out there to automate the wifi stuff, but as you learn more, it's often easier just to do it the "ugly" way that works.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frederic

I did download Silverwolf, but it wouldn't compile since I couldn't get QT working. I compiled it and installed it, but it went "somewhere" and not part of the path yet since I'm unsure where it went.

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It's probably in /usr/lib/qt3 but some distros put it elsewhere. Gentoo (I think) puts it in /lib/qt/3. It might also be in /opt/qt3. Wherever it is, you may need to add it to your ld.so.conf file and run ldconfig when you're done. You should also have the Qt bin directory in your PATH.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frederic

I'll figure it out :D

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Have fun :chase:

I'm still struggling with the driver. Maybe someone could point me in the right direction here. Compiling ain't my thang just yet... :D

Driver: rt2x00-2.0.0-b3 (serialmonkey)
kernel: 2.6.14-1.1656_FC4

"Make" works, and compiles successfully.
"Make install" works, and shuffles things about.

Then upon reboot, I get this in my /var/log/messages file:
Feb 1 19:48:55 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_get_encodeext
Feb 1 19:48:55 truck kernel: rt2x00core: disagrees about version of symbol ieee80211_wx_set_encode
Feb 1 19:48:55 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_set_encode
Feb 1 19:48:55 truck kernel: rt2x00core: disagrees about version of symbol ieee80211_wx_get_encode
Feb 1 19:48:55 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_get_encode
Feb 1 19:48:55 truck kernel: rt2x00core: disagrees about version of symbol ieee80211_txb_free
Feb 1 19:48:55 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_txb_free
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_set_encodeext
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: disagrees about version of symbol ieee80211_wx_get_scan
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_wx_get_scan
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_set_geo
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: disagrees about version of symbol ieee80211_rx
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_rx
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: disagrees about version of symbol ieee80211_rx_mgt
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_rx_mgt
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_get_geo
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: disagrees about version of symbol free_ieee80211
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol free_ieee80211
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol ieee80211_is_valid_channel
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: disagrees about version of symbol alloc_ieee80211
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2x00core: Unknown symbol alloc_ieee80211
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_tx
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_core_probe
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_rx
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_resume
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_suspend
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_update_stats
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_debug_level
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_device
Feb 1 19:48:56 truck kernel: rt2500pci: Unknown symbol rt2x00_core_remove


"truck" in the hostname, if that is confusing.

Okay, I managed to get something to happen.

For some reason, the wireless card arrived as eth1 instead of wlan0 or ra0 as was the case with older versions of the driver.

"iwlist eth1 scan" found my neighbors network successfully after the last reboot. I need to figure out what to do from there... but at least I can see a network, indicating the driver installed.

Whew!

In my /var/log/messages I noticed the rt2500 driver kept bombing by "disagreeing" with ieee80211 kernel modules. I searched around the hard drive in the /lib/modules/<kernel>/net directory, and found a whole bunch of these modules, identically named as the modules in the /lib/modules/rt2500 directory, but with older dates. So being bold I copied the new drivers from /lib/modules/rt2500 to the /lib/modules/<kernel>/net/ieee80211 directory, ran depmod -ae and rebooted.

Something magical happened, and I can see wireless networks now :D

wifiscanner bombed whether I let the default of wlan0 pass through (expected) but also bombed when pointing at eth1.

I didn't set anything in the network-control-devices, and I'm not sure if I should or not. I glanced through, but the rt2500 driver doesnt' show up at all so I cancelled as I didn't want to make it not work because I did something.

So, now to play some more. Just wanted to share what I discovered. Not sure if its the right solution or not... but I see networks!