OESF Portables Forum

Everything Else => Zaurus Distro Support and Discussion => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => Angstrom & OpenZaurus => Topic started by: ..bk.. on July 12, 2006, 02:26:32 pm

Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: ..bk.. on July 12, 2006, 02:26:32 pm
hi there,

as http://wiki.openzaurus.org/FAQ#WiFi_related_questions (http://wiki.openzaurus.org/FAQ#WiFi_related_questions) states under WPA encryption support, the card's station firmware must be at least 1.7.0 to do WPA.

it further links to a page ( http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism (http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism) ) describing how to update your card's firmware, but not without saying that oz doesn't provide a hostap driver with support for flashing firmwares.

unfortunately, this appears to really be the case: the userspace tool (prism2_srec) is available and able to check for firmware compatibility, but it seems the kernel driver (is this hostap.ko ? or hostap_cs.ko ?) isn't compiled with support for fw flashing.

i can understand this: "we do not want to hear that users bricked their cards by mistake", but in some other way it reduce the freedom of users to willingly update their cards or brick them (if they really like to ;-) ).

i was a bit unsure to report this as a bug, as its a mere feature wish, and i'm not sure if this would ever qualify as a candidate for the 3.5.4.x upgrade feed, so i started a new topic.

to sum this up, i think the most probable solution is someone building a special hostap kernel module with this feature enabled. as i don't have an OE environment and fear a bit setting it up, i carefully ask people that have one to do this. if you have some spare computation time, i (and probably others) would be quite delighted to be able to update their cards to do WPA.

muchas gracias in advance...

PS: i have a c760 with (by now) 3.5.4 installed. think the situations is the same in 3.5.4.1. (at least according to pacthes in OE repo).
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: ins0mniaque on July 18, 2006, 04:14:43 pm
I can confirm this. I installed OZ 3.5.4.1 on my SL-C3000 to get WPA support (which I could unfortunatly not get with OpenBSD). I'm having the same problems.

If someone could provide binaries, I (and obviously others) would be happy.


Thank you in advance,

JP
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: mikeones on July 21, 2006, 03:29:01 am
Quote
I can confirm this. I installed OZ 3.5.4.1 on my SL-C3000 to get WPA support (which I could unfortunatly not get with OpenBSD). I'm having the same problems.

If someone could provide binaries, I (and obviously others) would be happy.


Thank you in advance,

JP
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=135600\")
I just upgraded my firmware today on my WCL1100C CF card.  You can find information [a href=\"http://aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=prism2_flashing&DokuWiki=f1d8aadb3d5490c995830bef5672e6c4]here[/url] and here (http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/).  I do not have access to a winblows pc to flash the firmware so I had the same problems you have described.   I was able to find the hoostap drivers here (http://zaurus.aircrack-ng.org/akita/) but it was not easy using them.  I had to remove the old hostap-utils and kernel-module-(cs)2.6 and use the patched driver but ipkg failed (I had no net connection on the Z).  The new hostap-utils installed fine but the kernel-moduals failed.  Not letting that stop me I downloaded the files to a winblows pc and renamed the to .tar.gz files.  Then I used 7zip to unpack them (winzip failed).  Inside the tarballs was a data.tar.gz containing the bianary .ko driver.  I just put the data.tar.gz on mu usb, moved it to my Z, "cd /", moved the tar file to / and "tar zxvf data.tar.gz".  Then I proceeded to prism2_srec -v to test the firmware flash.  Having done it before and not worried about breaking my card I went all-the-way.  It worked out fine for me.  

Good luck
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: speculatrix on July 21, 2006, 07:47:12 am
I used a cf-to-pcmcia adaptor in my suse 9.3 laptop to reflash my Mercury/Zonet ZCF1100 card, and it "worked for me" ™. I was then able to use hostap with WPA no problem.
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: ..bk.. on July 21, 2006, 04:09:04 pm
cool!

i already started to setup my own OE env to build the modded drivers myself, but as it turned out, building sth with OE is a quite nice stress test and after 1,5 days one of my hard drives went into nirvana... i'll give the akita modules a try, despite me owning a c760, but that shouldn't make much of a difference.

thanks a lot...
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: koen on July 21, 2006, 04:15:40 pm
Quote
cool!

i already started to setup my own OE env to build the modded drivers myself, but as it turned out, building sth with OE is a quite nice stress test and after 1,5 days one of my hard drives went into nirvana... i'll give the akita modules a try, despite me owning a c760, but that shouldn't make much of a difference.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=136038\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yes it does, it uses a different cpu, so I would be surprised if it worked.
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: ..bk.. on July 21, 2006, 04:30:18 pm
Quote
Quote
cool!

i already started to setup my own OE env to build the modded drivers myself, but as it turned out, building sth with OE is a quite nice stress test and after 1,5 days one of my hard drives went into nirvana... i'll give the akita modules a try, despite me owning a c760, but that shouldn't make much of a difference.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=136038\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yes it does, it uses a different cpu, so I would be surprised if it worked.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=136039\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

hm, i thought strongarm (collie) vs. xscale (c7x0) was _really_ different (as it's a different architecture && instruction set), but to me the difference between pxa255 and pxa 270 is more like between i586 and i686, or am i getting sth wrong ?

btw, the *.conf files in OE for c7x0 and akita seem very similar too, both inherit zaurus-clamshell.conf (and in there only some sound stuff is different) ...
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: ..bk.. on July 28, 2006, 03:35:47 pm
Quote
Yes it does, it uses a different cpu, so I would be surprised if it worked.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=136039\")
be suprised, it works ;-)

i just downloaded the modified modules from [a href=\"http://zaurus.aircrack-ng.org/akita]http://zaurus.aircrack-ng.org/akita[/url] , unpacked the ipkgs and copied hostap.ko and hostap_cs.ko over to my z.
made a backup of the original modules and overwrote them. a quick depmod -a  did not complain, also the drivers loaded without problems. the rest is described under http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/ (http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/)

happy flashing ;-)
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: zedkatuf2 on August 09, 2006, 05:47:12 am
Quote
Quote
Yes it does, it uses a different cpu, so I would be surprised if it worked.
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=136039\")
be suprised, it works ;-)

i just downloaded the modified modules from [a href=\"http://zaurus.aircrack-ng.org/akita]http://zaurus.aircrack-ng.org/akita[/url] , unpacked the ipkgs and copied hostap.ko and hostap_cs.ko over to my z.
made a backup of the original modules and overwrote them. a quick depmod -a  did not complain, also the drivers loaded without problems. the rest is described under http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/ (http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/)

happy flashing ;-)
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=136775\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Sorry to be thck, but could you post details of more or less exactly what you did, as I'm slightly at a loss as to which firmware I need for my Ambicom 1100C.

Cheers,

zedkatuf
Title: Updating Prism Firmware ...
Post by: ..bk.. on August 30, 2006, 07:38:55 am
Quote
Sorry to be thck, but could you post details of more or less exactly what you did, as I'm slightly at a loss as to which firmware I need for my Ambicom 1100C.

Cheers,

zedkatuf
[div align=\"right\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=137919\")

just read [a href=\"http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/]http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/[/url]  _toroughly_   ;-)