Setup a Linksys WPC11 and Wlan-ng on the Compaq Evo N1015v with Red Hat 9.0

Robert Toole <rtoole [at] usco.com>

Note if you came directly to this page from another site, - Please Go Here - before trying these steps

I use some pretty paranoid WEP settings, so the standard Red Hat GUI does not work for me. If you are ok with only setting up a peer-to-peer wireless network, or are happy using only Key #1 on your access point, then the GUI and orinocco_cs driver for the WPC11 will work for you. You can get detailed info on setting up your wireless under Red Hat from from the best WPC11 site out there Configuring WPC11 Wireless cards by Loran Hughes.

In order to get more robust options than Red Hat provides, you will need the wlan-ng package. I have found that the rpms you can download from Tim Miller here http://prism2.unixguru.raleigh.nc.us/. work every time. The rpms he provides are for the stock red-hat kernels, however. But he kindly provides the source rpms which we can rebuild against our shiny new kernel. You will want the Source RPMs for the wlan-ng-0.2.0-7 package. I usually stick it in /usr/src, but put it wherever you want.

Fix up the source tree

This is another one of my - I don't know why, but it works - things.

  1. We need to go back to the kernel build procedures up to and including make dep

    make clean

    make mrproper

    make menuconfig

     - just load your .config file that you copied to /boot/config-2.4.21- <Your Kernel Name> and then hit <esc> <esc> to save your .config and exit out of menuconfig.

    make dep

  2. rpmbuild needs to see a Red-Hat like source tree to work so we need to create a directory called configs in /usr/src/linux-2.4.20

    mkdir /usr/src/linux-2.4.20/configs

    Copy your kernel config to the new directory

    cp /usr/src/linux-2.4.20/.config /usr/src/linux-2.4.20/configs/kernel-2.4.21-<Your Kernel Name>-i386.config

    You must name the file so it ends with -i386.config as shown above or rpmbuild will fail

  3. Make sure the link  /lib/modules/2.4.21-<Your Kernel Name>/build correctly points to /usr/src/linux-2.4.20 if not, make it:

    ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.20 /lib/modules/2.4.21-<Your Kernel Name>/build

  4. Make a couple of dynamic links

    ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.20 /usr/src/linux

    ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.20 /usr/src/linux-2.4

    Not sure if you really need these or not, but it doesn't hurt

Install wlan-ng

  1. Rebuild the Wlan-ng SRPM

    rpmbuild --rebuild /usr/src/kernel-wlan-ng-0.2.0-7.src.rpm

  2. Install the rpms

    cd /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386

    rpm -ivh ./kernel-wlan-ng-0.2.0-7.i386.rpm

    rpm -ivh ./kernel-wlan-ng-modules-%{linvers}-0.2.0-7.i386.rpm

    rpm -ivh ./kernel-wlan-ng-pcmcia-0.2.0-7.i386.rpm

    while installing the pcmcia rpm, a script runs, asking you some questions, the default answers should be OK.

    rpmbuild makes 3 other rpms: debugging, PCI, and USB. unless you have a Linksys USB wireless adapter, you won't need these. (maybe the debugging rpm if you have trouble)

Configure wlan-ng

See these resources for configuring wlan-ng:

Configuring WPC11 Wireless cards  - by Loran Hughes.

http://www.saragossa.net/LinuxG3/ls-wlan.shtml  - another site for wireless and redhat

http://prism2.unixguru.raleigh.nc.us/. - Red-Hat rpms

http://www.linux-wlan.org/ - Homepage of the wlan-ng project

 

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Please direct questions or comments to rob

I will try to answer your questions or respond to comments as soon as I am able.