Robert Naylor » Kernel

WPA/IPW2200/Linux/Debian 3

robert — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 21:16:40 +0000

After hearing about Network Manager on LugRadio at Guadec I decided to give it a go.

A bit of messing around – including installing the version from Testing I found out I need a new kernel for WPA.

Of I went and got 2.6.17 and compiled it.

Things of Note:
I had to use the ieee80211 module and the ipw2200 module from the kernel – but they appear to work so now problems.

After that network manager poped up – it found my wireless network. Selected it, a setup box appeared in which I put my WPA pass-phrase in and off it went and connected – all working a lot more reliable that just wpa supplicant on its own. Could be down to the new kernel mind. However it is very easy to use, and well I impressed. It’ll make using my laptop as a laptop a lot easier.

Update
Wow – after all this work and finally wireless is the most stable I’ve ever had it on Linux. In fact its not gone wrong once since this. Even in windows I was having a few problems now and again. Speed is good, stability and great and it just works. I enter a password in at the start and it goes off, picks the right network and passpharse and just sets it up for me.

Good Wireless News

robert — Thu, 25 May 2006 20:08:58 +0000

After a few weeks of use – I can confirm my wireless works well by just starting wp-supplicant. No constant restarting and removing/radding of modules hoping to get a use-able speed. The speed can sometimes be a bit poor – but at least its use-able and doesn’t hinder unless transferring large files.

WPA/IPW2200/Linux/Debian 2

robert — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:57:23 +0000

Yes once again I have to go through the pain of WPA/IPW2200/Debian/Kernel problems. Given that I have a laptop I wanted more laptop like features on my system – so I kernel upgrade was needed.

Currently using:
Kernel 2.6.14
-Wireless Extension v19.
Debian Etch + Extra apt sources
wpa_supplicant v0.4.7
Wireless-Tools version 28

The problem this time is that I needed to change some of the options for wpa_supplicant. No longer does it work with the ipw drivers but the wext drivers

/etc/default/wpasupplicant now reads:

ENABLED=1
OPTIONS=” -D wext -ddd -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf”

It works for now, but a new kernel compile is needed as the laptop doesn’t powerdown on shutdown at present. So may be yet another upgrade needed to get wireless working again.

WPA/IPW2200/Linux/Debian

robert — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 20:34:21 +0000

Wireless on Linux sucks. It seems everytime one little bit in the chain of programs, firmware and drivers changes I lose WPA capabilities. In fact currently Debian, IPW2000 and wpa_supplicent don’t work together, and apparently this happens on a number of other distributions.

I have got it working, but I used a custom 2.6.12 Kernel (the debian one doesn’t quite agree with all the stuff on my laptop), and compiled and installed ieee80211-1.0.2 from source, then compiled ipw2200-1.0.6 from source and it works! Well for now. Just in case its important the version of WPA_Supplicant I’m running is 0.4.6.

Time to see how long it lasts this time……..

(Oh and by it works means that most of the time it loads in the right order and works – sometime it loads in the wrong order so it ends up been eth2 and not eth1, other times I need to remove and re-add the ipw2200 module for things to work)