| Path: | INSTALL |
| Last Update: | Tue Jul 04 14:29:28 IST 2006 |
Released under the terms of GNU General Public License (GPL) Copyright© 2004, Andrea Merello, Install instructions by Rick Bronson; updated by Balwinder S "bsd" Dheeman
NOTE: These instructions were written for a Knoppix 3.6 (using Linux 2.6.7 kernel, and have been tested to compile for kernel versions 2.6.12 and 2.6.14)
One of the following devices; have already been tested:
PLEASE report if you find other these cards work; to find relevant info about your card use ‘lspci’ and, or ‘lsusb’ perhaps with a verbose option. Send name of the OEM, Card type, ManID, DevID and Revision numbers plus output from the following:
dmesg |grep rtl818x
Thank you in anticipation.
Linux 2.6.0 or greater, 2.4 might work but you’ll have to do some hacking.
Get latest driver from, hopefully you already have done that! sourceforge.net/projects/rtl818x (in this example we’ll use rtl818x-1.0.0-rc1) and build:
tar xzf rtl8180-1.0.0-rc1.tar.gz
cd rtl8180-1.0.0-rc1
make
(naturally, needed to substitute version 1.0.0-rc1 with a current one)
You can ignore any "no CRC" and, or other warnings seen during compilation.
Module loading (order is important)
for users, testers and, or developers convenience scripts ./ifup-wlan0 and ./ifdown-wlan0 are provided, but for these you must edit your /etc/network/interfaces on a Knoppix and, or Debian systems.
man interfaces # could be your best friend
sodo vim /etc/network/interfaces
Anyway if you want to do testing and, or verification manually:
# you may or may not have to do this following step
sudo insmod /usr/src/linux/lib/crc32.ko
# the following is required by ieee80211-rtl
sudo insmod ieee80211_crypt-rtl.ko
# you may load any and, or all of the following
sudo insmod ieee80211_crypt_wep-rtl.ko
sudo insmod ieee80211_crypt_tkip-rtl.ko
sudo insmod ieee80211_crypt_ccmp-rtl.ko
# the following is required by rtl818x
sudo insmod ieee80211-rtl.ko
# you will also need ARC4 support in kernel or by loading module
sudo insmod rtl818x.ko
Once the above is done, you can do some checks to verify if all the things went well?
Doing
cat /proc/modules
Gives something like:
-------------------------
rtl818x 104588 0 - Live 0xd0acd000
ieee80211_rtl 61700 1 rtl818x, Live 0xd0c6c000
ieee80211_crypt_ccmp_rtl 9344 0 - Live 0xd09df000
ieee80211_crypt_tkip_rtl 11520 0 - Live 0xd09c3000
ieee80211_crypt_wep_rtl 7808 0 - Live 0xd09d8000
ieee80211_crypt_rtl 7940 4 ieee80211_rtl,ieee80211_crypt_ccmp_rtl, ...
crc32 8064 3 ieee80211_crypt_tkip_rtl,ieee80211_crypt_wep_rtl,pcmcia, ...
-------------------------
If you do:
dmesg
You should see something like:
-------------------------
rtl818x: Memory mapped space @ 0xf6000000
rtl818x: MAC/BBP controller is a RTL8185 b/g (D)
rtl818x: This is a CardBus NIC
rtl818x: Reported EEPROM chip is a 93c46 (1Kbit)
rtl818x: Card MAC address is 00:02:44:b1:b9:37
rtl818x: EEPROM version 105
...
rtl818x: Probe completed
--------------------------
In this output you should see also other details, like if you have a digital or analog PHY. Support for the latter is experimental as yet, please report …
If you do:
ifconfig -a
You should see
--------------------------
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:02:44:B1:B9:37
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 KiB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Memory:d09ca000-d09ca100
--------------------------
Doing:
cat /proc/interrupts |grep wlan
You should see something like:
--------------------------
11: 0 ..... , wlan0
--------------------------
Where ‘11’ could be any number
If you have a CardBus card, doing "cardctl ident" should say something like:
--------------------------
Socket 1:
product info: "Realtek", "Rtl8180"
manfid: 0x0000, 0x024c
function: 6 (network)
--------------------------
Don‘t panic, the above info also depends on CIS data files, if you have these and, or the same are not up-to-date, you may not get anything from this step.
Doing:
iwconfig
Shows:
--------------------------
wlan0 802.11b/g Mode:Managed Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s
Retry:on Fragment thr:2432 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
--------------------------
For now not all parameters are meaningful (like Sensitivity).
Type in the following:
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
At this point, if you are near an AP or wireless router you should start getting interrupts:
cat /proc/interrupts
--------------------------
11: 500 ...., wlan0
--------------------------
The second number increments. Note that this happens also if you have other peripherals on the same interrupt line and you use them.
Doing:
ifconfig
Shows (note RX bytes):
--------------------------
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:02:44:B1:B9:37
inet6 addr: fe80::202:44ff:feb1:b937/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1 errors:6 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:62 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:263 (263.0 b) TX bytes:2604 (2.5 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Memory:d09c4000-d09c4100
--------------------------
If you do:
iwlist scan
If you are in range of an AP or wireless router, you should see something like:
--------------------------
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 36:0C:5E:F9:64:FC
ESSID:"solar"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
Mode:Master
Channel:3
Encryption key:off
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s
Extra: Rates (Mb/s): 1 2 5.5 6 9 11 12 18 24 36 48 54
Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:158
Extra: Last beacon: 1294ms ago
--------------------------
Now set your SSID:
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid solar
Substitute ‘solar’ (my essid) with your essid.
Set your address (you may want to use different numbers here):
sudo ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0
Add a route, if you need it:
sudo route add default gw 192.168.0.1 dev wlan0
Try pinging another host (like the wireless router itself):
ping 192.168.0.1
For further usage hint (es. setting WEP key or monitor mode see README file)
On Debian machines, the interesting files are:
/etc/modprobe.d/ # man modprobe; quite helpful :)
/etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts # Knoppix provides/edits with wlcardconfig
/etc/network/interfaces # man interfaces; best friend ;)
You may also install your wireless interface automation scripts in the following directories:
/etc/network/if-down.d/
/etc/network/if-post-down.d/
/etc/network/if-pre-up.d/
/etc/network/if-up.d/
A wrieless-tools and, or a few other packages like airsnort, kismet, linux-wlan-ng and bridge-utils may also help here.
Sorry, Redhatian! I have not looked back Redhat and, or Fedora since I switched over to Debian based Linux distributions; I otherwise, do not hate anyone! Indeed, don’t have a Redhat/Fedora machine near or around :(
Some commands you can use to try to figure out what’s gone wrong:
lsmod |grep rtl
dmesg |grep ^rtl818x
dmesg |grep ^ieee80211
ifconfig wlan0
iwconfig wlan0
cat /proc/iomem
cat /proc/interrupts |grep wlan
cardctl ident
iwlist wlan0 scan
In particular dmesg output is very useful and, or shall highly be appreciated in feedback.
You need to have installed kernel sources for this to work; please let me know if it works with only kernel headers installed…
To debug IEEE 802.11 network stack and, or modules just enable IEEE80211_DEBUG option while runnig
sudo make xconfig # or menuconfig
from kernel source directory /usr/src/linux
This option will enable debug tracing output for the ieee80211 network stack.
This will result in the kernel module being ~70k larger. You can control which debug output is sent to the kernel log by setting the value in
/proc/net/ieee80211/debug_level
For example:
% echo 0x00000FFO > /proc/net/ieee80211/debug_level
For a list of values you can assign to debug_level, you can look at the bit mask values in <net/ieee80211.h>
To debug RTL818X driver, just un-comment a line in the Makefile in ./rtl818x-1.0.0-rc1 directory, find:
#EXTRA_CFLAGS += -DCONFIG_RTL818X_DEBUG=y
Un-commeting the above said line will enable debug tracing output for rtl818x driver; you can control whatever info you need is sent to the kernel log by setting the value in
/proc/net/rtl818x/debug_level
For example:
% echo 0x00000FFO > /proc/net/rtl818x/debug_level
For a list of values you can assign to debug_level, you can look at the bit mask values in <rtl818x.h>
NOTE: This will make your rtl818x module ~16k or more larger; so better avoid debug system for production environments.
$Id: INSTALL,v 1.3 2006/07/04 08:59:28 bsd3 Exp $