Gentoo Linux wireless success: Netgear WG311, madwifi, wpa_supplicant
(Also check out my HOWTO for the Netgear WG111, which is a USB device.)
It seems like there are 100 different ways to do wifi on Linux, and there is so much incomplete documentation floating around on all of them. I just finally got mine working, so I wanted to post a complete start-to-finish howto.
First of all, I'm running a 2.6.11-gentoo-r9 kernel on a Pentium-III system. My network card is a Netgear WG311 (v1, which isn't shown on the card, it just says WG311) PCI card, which does 802.11b/g. This card uses an Atheros chip:
[root@host]# lspci 0000:00:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
First I got the latest baselayout, which was 1.11.13:
[root@host]# emerge -vabk baselayout
Since baselayout changes /etc so much, and since dispatch-conf regularly borks my files, I make a complete backup of /etc before doing any etc-update or dispatch-conf. The whole of /etc is only a few tens of MB so it's no big deal to backup the whole thing:
[root@host]# mkdir /arch [root@host]# cp -a /etc /arch/etc-arch20050722-before-new-baselayout
Next I run etc-update to auto-merge trivial /etc changes, but then I exit it (use the "-1" option) and do dispatch-conf to manually merge the non-trivial changes.
OK, back to the topic at hand:
[root@host]# emerge -vabk wireless-tools [root@host]# emerge -vabk wpa_supplicant [root@host]# emerge -vabk madwifi-driver [root@host]# emerge -vabk madwifi-tools
This gets me wireless-tools-27-r1, wpa_supplicant-0.3.8-r1, madwifi-driver-0.1_pre20050420, and madwifi-tools-0.1_pre20050420.
Merging madwifi-driver told me to do some stuff when it finished, but I ignored it for now.
Next, start the driver and check that the modules all load:
[root@host]# modprobe ath_pci [root@host]# lsmod|grep ath ath_pci 52832 0 ath_rate_amrr 7076 1 ath_pci wlan 106652 3 ath_pci,ath_rate_amrr ath_hal 146864 2 ath_pci
Now put this into /etc/conf.d/net:
modules=( "wpa_supplicant" ) wpa_supplicant_ath0="-Dmadwifi" wpa_timeout_ath0=20 # optionally set the IP and router for your wireless card to use. # if you're using DHCP you can skip these. ifconfig_ath0=( "192.168.1.10 netmask 255.255.255.0" ) routes_ath0=( "default gw 192.168.1.1" )
Now create /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf by copying it from /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.example. Delete all the example network blocks at the bottom, and put just this one in:
network={
ssid="my_network_name"
# Don't put the password in here like this...
#psk="my WPA password"
#
# ...instead, use the wpa_passphrase utility to
# generate a hash from your SSID and password,
# and enter that hash here:
psk=da6b245c5de62423e6d263c822...
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
}
Since that file now contains your network credentials (even though they are hashed and thus relatively safe), make it readable by only root:
[root@host]# chmod 0600 /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
Create your net.ath0 device:
[root@host]# cd /etc/init.d [root@host]# ln -s net.eth0 net.ath0
Now your configuration should be complete; just restart the driver:
[root@host]# rmmod ath_pci ath_rate_amrr wlan ath_hal [root@host]# lsmod|grep ath (there should be no output) [root@host]# modprobe ath_pci
Run iwconfig and ifconfig to see that it's up:
[root@host]# iwconfig ath0
ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"yourssid"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point:
00:XX:XX:XX:XX:9E
Bit Rate:36 Mb/s Tx-Power:50 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:4CCD-DCC5-3CC8-2CC9-4CCE-DCC1-9CCC-8CC7
Security mode:restricted
Power Management:off
Link Quality=23/94 Signal level=-72 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
[root@host]# ifconfig ath0
ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:32
inet addr:192.168.1.10 Bcast:192.168.1.255
Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4 errors:4 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:4
TX packets:3 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
RX bytes:548 (548.0 b) TX bytes:417 (417.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Memory:f8d40000-f8d50000
You win!
Now to test it, stop your wired network card:
[root@host]# /etc/init.d/net.eth0 stop
But now your default route is gone, because it was mapped through eth0:
[root@host]# route Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 ath0 loopback localhost 255.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 lo
So add it back, on ath0:
[root@host]# route add default gw 192.168.1.1 [root@host]# route Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 ath0 loopback localhost 255.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 lo default 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ath0
Now your network should be working properly.
To make your ath0 start at boot:
[root@host]# rc-update add net.ath0 default * net.ath0 added to runlevel default * rc-update complete.
And to stop eth0 from starting anymore:
[root@host]# rc-update del net.eth0 default * net.eth0 removed from the following runlevels: default * rc-update complete.
Verify it:
[root@host]# rc-update show|grep -i net
local | default nonetwork
net.ath0 | default
net.eth0 |
net.lo | boot
net.ppp0 |
netmount | default
Finally, edit /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 and add a new line at the bottom that says just "ath_pci" (without quotes); this will load the driver automatically when your system starts.
Now reboot and the wireless network card should be working.
(Note: I also posted this in the Gentoo Forums.)