Topic: Partial Success With Wireless

[Kelvin]

Hi All,

I've had partial success in doing what I set out to do, basically, configure a SME server as a gateway for Wireless clients (1 x 10/100NIC as external interface and 1 x PCI Wireless Card as internal interface).

I can't seem to get DHCP to work for the wireless clients. If I manually configure the IP settings on the clients, they can see the server (and the internet) fine. But if I configure the workstations as DHCP clients, they can't find the DHCP server. I've modified the templates so that dhcpd fires up to look at wlan0 instead of eth1 (swapped). As far as I can tell dhcpd is running (before I modified the templates, it won't start because it cannot find eth1 -- obviously as it does not exist). Still, the wireless clients won't find it.

Any clues ??

Kelvin

[Nathan Fowler]

Try manually running from the console:
/usr/sbin/dhcpd wlan0

See if that works.

[Kelvin]

Hi Nathan,

Tried that before with no success.

I just thought of something. Perhaps DHCP can only work from an access point and not a peer-ad-hoc connection. Must look into that.

Kelvin

[gavin]

What cards are you using, I am attempting a similar type arrangement.

I have got the wlan0 interface running but see no RX packets in ifconfig , Any suggestions . Is there a howto about or a rough sequence of programs to load.

All compiled and installed ok, But not entirely convinced I have the setup right, Any chance you can post your configs ??

- Regards,
Gav

[Kelvin]

Hi Gavin,

Sorry, I actuall have to work this weekend and am not at the test setup right now.

Briefly, I'm using a Dlink DWL-520 with the prism2_pci drivers. I actually found that there is another driver developed for the Prism2 chipset that allows the cards to work as access points as well without needing firmware updates if the cards use prism 2.5 chipsets. Unfortunately, this other driver requires kernel 2.4.x to work - bummer !

I've also come across another problem which I'm trying to track down. The interface stops working after being on for about 30minutes (I haven't clocked it to see exactly how long or if it's consistently the same amount of time). The workstations could be in the middle of browsing, etc. and suddenly it stops.

I will post more as I learn more.

Kelvin

[gavin]

Thanks for the response.

I seem ot be having ussues with the card not Recieving but transmitting OK.

Did you load the PCMCIA support first and then run the wlan... stufff or did you not need the PCMCIA stuff. Not sure if that is my problem.

Keep up the good work.

Next we'll be building pringle's Yagis.

- Gav

[Michael Smith]

My home SME box serves up IPs and does a fine job as server/gateway via an ordinary 5-port switch and a D-Link DWL-1000AP access point serving 2 wireless clients.  This was painless to set up & required no fiddling with SME config files.

[gavin]

No Guts, No Glory. !!

Can someone confirm for me that there is an entry in the /etc/modules.conf for the DLINK PCI wireless card.

When I run "lspci", I get a Harris Technology Ethernet card allocated as in unknown device.  

Is that a clue.

- Gav

[Kelvin]

> No Guts, No Glory. !!

Ha ! Ha ! I totally agree ! But for a slightly different reason (or maybe not). If I (or someone more capable) am able to lay the groundwork or do the legwork to have a tried and true working How-To on this, then hey, if someone out there could do without the extra expense of having to BUY an access point, why ever not ?? Like many others out there, I'm trying to contribute to a community that contributes to me with help and support for next to nix (and in many cases, absolutely nix !).

Gavin, sorry, I got caught up on other projects. Yes, for my DLink DWL520, I have a line in modules.conf ( alias wlan0 prism2_pci ). I copied the driver files (one for 802.11 support and the other is the actual Prism2 driver) into /lib/modules/2.2.19-7.0.8/net. My driver is specifically for the PCI version of the card and therefore required no PCMCIA support files. I copied ifcfg-eth0 to ifcfg-wlan0 (located in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts) and modified it accordingly. I also copied the file rc.wlan into /etc/rc.d/init.d and then created the necessary symbolic links to the various run-levels to activate the card upon bootup and the file wlan.conf into /etc and modified it accordingly.

The rc.wlan script actually calls a program called wlanctl-ng which I copied into /sbin. I can't remember what else I changed or did (if anything).

Anyway, the setup currently works except :-
1. I cannot get Wireless clients to get a DHCP address from the SME server
2. The driver / card stops working after a few minutes and will not come back until I reboot the server. Then it will work again for a few minutes and stop, and so on. Apparently, others have experience a similar issue with the Prism2 drivers.

That's how it stands at the moment.

Regards,

Kelvin

[gavin]

Not wanting to appear to be a complete newbie.

You mentioned copying the drivers to the //lib/modules/2.2.19-7.0.8/net directory.

Which drivers in particular did you copy, Completely understand the rest except this one step.

- Gav

[Kelvin]

Hi Gavin,

p80211.o and prism2_pci.o.

p80211.o provides 802.11b support
prism2_pci.o is the prism2 chipset driver


Kelvin

[Pete]

you might want to try the host_ap drivers tehn you can run that interface as an accesspoint

pete