Pdaxii13 5.4.9 Wifi Probs

[danboid]

I've been away from pdaXii13 for some time now. My wifi card always works fine under Cacko and it also used to work no probs under earlier versions of pdaXii13 but it just blinks at me under 5.4.9.

I see that Jon_J and others with an Ambicom card got theirs working in this thread here:

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showto...mp;#entry168420

but reading that thread hasn't solved my problem. Meanie says to uncomment everything but your own card from /etc/pcmcia/config but the problem for me is that my card isn't listed in that file. My wifi card is a Senao NL-2011CD, Prism2 chipset I think.

If I do an lsmod I can see that both hostap and hostap_cs are loaded- could this be the problem?

Also, how do I get full screen, bvdd video playback working? I noticed there is no bvdd module loaded and 'modprobe bvdd' fails

So would these problems be fixed if I upgraded to pdaXii2? Which is more stable and bug free, pdaXii13 5.4.9 or pdaXii2?

EDIT

X did something a bit weird (a big desktop switcher just appeared in top left corner of the screen) so I did a reboot. Tried playing a video again after a reboot and it played full screen OK, bvdd is loaded now! Yay! I was thinking my luck might be in but still no wifi

[danboid]

I've just spent another couple of hours trying to get wifi working under pdaXii13 5.4.9 (on my c3000) to no avail.

I have 2 wifi cards I've been trying to get to work, which 'cardctl ident' identifies as follows:

Code: [Select]

Socket 0:
  product info: "WLAN", "11Mbps_PC-Card_3.0", "ISL37100P", "Eval-RevA"
  manfid: 0x000b, 0x7100
  function: 6 (network)

Code: [Select]

Socket 0:
  product info: "PLANEX COMMUNICATIONS INC.", "PLANEX GW-CF11X Wireless CF Card", "", ""
  manfid: 0xd601, 0x0010
  function: 6 (network)
I did a search for 'ISL37100P' and apparently that card requires the "prism2_cs" kernel module but this appears to be missing from pdaXii13 although it does have the prism USB module but that's no good to me. This same card worked fine under earlier releases of pdaXii13- why did this module get removed and where can I get a copy?

The Planex card supposedly requires "hostap_cs" networking module, so if I edited /etc/pcmcia/config, left the 'Device Driver Definitions' and 'Dummy Drivers' sections intact but deleted everything in the 'Ethernet Adapter Definitions' and added this in its place:

Code: [Select]

card  "PLANEX COMMUNICATIONS INC."
version "PLANEX GW-CF11X Wireless CF Card"
manfid 0xd601, 0x0010
bind "hostap_cs"
ejected the card, restarted CF/PCMCIA service, re-inserted card... nothing. No modules are being loaded and it just says 'unsupported card' in matchbox panel's card applet. I also tried binding to "hostap" but that did the same so I also edited /etc/pcmcia/hostap_cs.conf to look like this:

Code: [Select]

device "hostap_cs"
   class "network" module "hostap", "hostap_cs"

card  "PLANEX COMMUNICATIONS INC."
version "PLANEX GW-CF11X Wireless CF Card"
manfid 0xd601, 0x0010
bind "hostap_cs"
but that hasn't made any difference. Does this file actually get used anyway? What other files are important to establishing a working wifi connection?

I'm all out of ideas now, please can someone help me get wifi working! It would appear Meanie has stopped working on and supporting pdaXii13 and seeing as how wifi used to work out-of-the-box in older versions this is a showstopper and a real shame. We need to add a 'Fixing Wifi' section to meanies otherwise excellent and very comprehensive documentation on the Tyrannozaurus site as most Z need this functioning to be productive and use their Z to its full capacity.

[Jon_J]

I didn't write down a "step by step" guide when I got my wifi working in pdaxii13,
but using this post by "rgrep", I finally got it working.
https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showto...amp;#entry44759
The WPA thing is different than in Cacko. Without looking it up, I think the difference is the quotation marks.
Cacko:  "WPA=y"
pdaxii13:  WPA=y

It's been so long since I got it working, I don't actually remember the steps I took.
Try the thread you linked, (when I figured out my wifi settings), and the thread above by "rgrep"
Also look for some threads with a similar date as the one where I "fixed" my wifi, Look for wifi-radar discussions.

[danboid]

Hi Jon!

Thanks very much for the reply but unfortunately I'm not getting even as much as a blinking wifi light or any network modules being loaded

Seeing as it was hermes.conf that worked for you and rgrep, I thought I'd try it too so I replaced /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf with

Code: [Select]

device "hostap_cs"
class "hermes"
module "hostap", "hostap_cs"

card  "PLANEX COMMUNICATIONS INC."
version "PLANEX GW-CF11X Wireless CF Card"
manfid 0xd601, 0x0010
bind "hostap_cs"
And restarted the pcmcia service but it hasn't made any difference, I can worry about WPA when I've just got a simple unprotected connection working first.

Its very confusing that there's at least 3 different files which MIGHT be being used for configuring my wifi card. It would be great if somebody with working wifi under pdaXii13 could post copies of the relevant files so I can try them with my setup.

[Jon_J]

Take a look at these.
I have previously backed up these 4 files for future re-flashing, and I did use these 4 files the last time I re-flashed, and WIFI worked.
Also, another thing that works for me for connecting is, I use Meanie's version of network config (network-cfg) to make my connection to my AP.
It's located here: /usr/bin/network-cfg
I don't use (network.py) or (wifi-radar) to connect.
----------------
config
hermes.conf
hostap_cs.conf
network.opts
----------------
These files are from June 06, I don't remember all the details at the moment.
You might want to note that I have the Ambicom WL1100C card, so substitute your card for my "working" settings.
I zipped them up on my windows machine.
I don't have a working linux desktop at the moment. I'm going to dedicate my other machine to an HDTV card.

Jon

[danboid]

Thanks for posting your wifi config files Jon but sadly I had no more luck with yours than the ones which came as standard in that with using your files my cards get 'detected', hostap and hostap_cs modules get loaded and the the wifi light blinks for a bit. Whilst the light is blinking, ifconfig shows me that I have a wlan0 and/or wifi0 (one card gives me two network ports, one just one) but this network port(s) disappears as soon as the light stops blinking, which takes about a minute.

Thanks for pointing out Meanies network-cfg, it seems to have a few extra options over network.py but it isn't going to help solve this problem unfortunately. Maybe another config file got changed in 5.4.9 that we're unaware of and this is effecting my wifi - do you remember what version of pdaXii13 you flashed Jon?

What I don't understand is that my cards don't seem to even be mentioned in the wifi config files, yet their names appear in the matchbox card manager applet when plugged in. However, when I edited the 3 config files so that ONLY my card (the Planex one)was specified in all 3 I got nothing, no blinking light, no modules loaded and no name in the mb-card-applet so maybe I mustn't understand the correct way to translate the output of cardctl ident to a valid card descriptor.

Maybe I could try to find an older pdaXii13 and install that but I'm not sure which version fixed the keyboard problem and I've much rather have reliable keyboard and no wifi than the other way around. I've been totally spoiled by Mandriva 2008 on the PC recently, which has superb wifi support that just works. If setting up wifi under Linux has ever involved anything more than just setting up WEP/WPA I normally end up in a situation like this- lost, confused, stressed and clueless.

I wonder if Linux will ever get to the point where stuff that really should work (like my wifi cards here) ie hardware verifed as working, will just be able to work without havig to know which file to edit where. I'd always want the option of being able to edit text config files for ultimate configuration options but it would be great if there were scripts for stuff like this to just get the basics working.

[Jon_J]

Thanks for pointing out Meanies network-cfg, it seems to have a few extra options over network.py but it isn't going to help solve this problem unfortunately. Maybe another config file got changed in 5.4.9 that we're unaware of and this is effecting my wifi - do you remember what version of pdaXii13 you flashed Jon?

When I re-flashed the last time, I flashed to pdaxii13-5.4.9
One must flash 5.4.9 in order to be able to upgrade to the latest, which is what I'm using currently. "pdaxii13-5.5-alpha4" or "pdaxii13v2"
I copied my "backup-wifi" files to my pdaxii13 setup just after I finished flashing 5.4.9
It's much easier to upgrade to pdaxii13v2 with an internet connection. As I recall, I had my Wifi working when I upgraded to pdaxii13v2.
BTW, there is no way to flash the latest version, it's still in alpha and Meanie said the only way to get this version is to upgrade. (No flash files are available).

EDIT:
you said in your first post.

I've been away from pdaXii13 for some time now. My wifi card always works fine under Cacko and it also used to work no probs under earlier versions of pdaXii13 but it just blinks at me under 5.4.9.

Since your card works in cacko, try comparing the relevent files to your pdaxii13 files. I know they are not exactly the same, but there are some similarities with these files.

[danboid]

I can only think of two methods for me to get wifi working now.

One (and this would be the best method but I'm going to be lucky I think) is if I could somehow get hold of an old pdaXii13 release, 5.1 or earlier should do it. If it is just those 4 files I need correctly configured then I should be able to just install the old pdaX, copy them, re-install the latest version and replace the wifi conf files - voila! (I hope!)

If nobody (Antix or Meanie being the most likely) has any old pdaXii13 versions then I'm going to try writing to whoever maintains the linux pcmcia utils like cardctl and see if they can de-mystify this process.

[danboid]

I've had a look at the cacko install tar balls and it would seem that cacko has an equivalent of network.opts called WLAN.conf so I tried copying that over my /etc/pcmcia/network.opts under pdaXii13 but it only made things worse (no blinking and 'unsupported card')

So is nobody running an older install of pdaXii13 (5.1 or earlier) who could copy me there wifi config files?

Does Titchy use the same kind of wifi config files as pdaXii13 or did that change for 2.6? I might also be able to try that.