I downloaded the wlan rpms (base, modules, PCMCIA) and installed them. I did the best I could to edit the /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.opts file. That thing is a nightmare! I also made sure that there was the "alias wlan0 prism2_cs" line in my /etc/modules.conf file.

I still cannot connect though (the light on my netgear card just blinks on and off).

If anyone has any ideas as to what I may be doing wrong or if you know how to configure the wlan-ng.opts file, please let me know.

Thanks!

First off, does the card get activated? Take the last 20 or so lines from the command "dmesg" and paste them in here.

Also, if you have encryption running on the router, turn it off for a while until you can get a connection through wireless, then fiddle with getting encryption to work.

What's your wireless network name (essid), and can you post the important chunk of wlan-ng.opts.

Cheers,

Finegan

Thanks for pointing out what should have been the obvious method to me. I disabled WEP on my AP and edited wlan-ng.opts only minimally and viola! Now I will try to make it work with WEP. If I can't make it work after some serious effort, I will post another message here.

Thanks for the help!

What if when you "make install" and the "wland" daemon fails to compile? Haven't gotten a clean install yet. Had anyone else had this problem? I have the Netgear 7.3 drivers for the MA401 and RedHat 8 installed.....

Jeff

What version of the driver package are you using and at what point did the drivers fail to compile, the specific error message is important.

Cheers,

Finegan

Hey....thanks for the reply. A little background on me so you don't expect too much. I'm an X-system administrator of SUN/OS. I have been in management for about 8 years. My skills are somewhat lacking...I became interested in Linux about 5 or 6 years ago. Boy has it come a long way!

To answer your question:

linux-2.4.18-14
ma401_RedHat73_drivers which included:
linux-wlan-ng-0.1.15
pcmcia-cs-3.1.24

I have since upgraded with the following rpms:
kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.31.9.i386.rpm
kernel-bigmem-2.4.18-14.i686.rpm

It fails at the very end during the Make install of the wland driver. The object module completes but the error during the linking phase is:

undefined reference to 'sprintf_Rsmp_1d26aa98'

It appears as if the libraries that the code was built around are different than the ones on my system. I'm a little lost here....

Are there ma401 drivers for Linux 8.0?

Thanks in advance.

Jeff.

There's quite a few. The MA401 is just another vanilla prism2 card. I've never been a big fan of the linux-wlan project's drivers. They bum compile a lot, there's just too much code there, and they're not interoperable with the wireless extensions in the kernel.

Regardless, you can get the orinoco modules to load with little hastle if you just stick these lines in /etc/pcmcia/config just about anywhere:

card "NETGEAR MA401RA Wireless PC"
manfid 0x000b, 0x7300
bind "orinoco_cs"

Take a look at this page:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...1&pagenumber=1

The driver will also apparently work with the hostap_cs modules, again, with a patched config file. As far as I can tell the MA401 is just another prism2 card, but it seems to be left off of the conf files of 2 of the three driver packages that support them.

Cheers,

Finegan

Thanks for your help so far.....I think I'm a little behind the other guy in the link you sent. I can't even get the linux-wlan-ng-0.1.15 to compile. I've looked at the suggestions in the link but I can't help but think that I have to get the package to compile first and get a "wland".

Let me ask this question. If I copy down the rpms for my version of the kernel do they replace the manually built modules? I'm assuming that rpms have already been built. Is that correct? I may have been doing this the hard way by trying to manually "make" these.

The link was to try and get cardmgr to load an entirely different set of drivers than those provided by the linux-wlan project. The orinoco drivers are in kernel, and if there is something such as this, they're the "official" linux drivers for prism2 chipsets.

The problem is, by reports that I've read, not witnessed, they don't always do so hot with prism2 cards as they're really built for orinoco cards and prism2 functionality has been added since their inception. I've gotten them to work fine with a DWL-650 and a WPC11 v2, as well as the PLX card for the WPC11, but that's far from every prism2 card out there...

I think your compile problems are coming from version mis-matches, possibly in def files and those upgraded pcmcia RPMs you have. As I've mentioned many times before, the linux-wlan modules hate to compile a lot...

There is also a third option, the hostap modules, which oddly enough work better in my experience than both of the other packages for prism2 cards such as the MA401, but will still require that hack entry in /etc/pcmcia/config from above.

The links to the pages of all three projects you can find under my profile in my bookmarks. Er, here

Cheers,

Finegan

OK, I should probably start back at the beginning. When I do a /sbin/cardctl ident I get:

Socket 0:
product info: "NETGEAR MA401 WIRELESS PC", "Version 01.00", ""
manfid :0x0156, 0x0002
function: 6 (network)
Socket 1:
no product info available

I have the following packages installed:
kernel-2.4.18-14
kernel-wlan-ng-0.1.15-6
kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.31-9
kernel-wlan-ng-pcmcia-0.1.15-6

During the boot process I get a happy beep and a bonk. I have tried the mods to /etc/pcmcia/config for the orinoco drivers but didn't help. Where would you suggest I go from here? Also, will the card use eth1 or wlan0? Eth1 doesn't exist. Any help is much appreciated.
Jeff.

Hi -- I was reading through this thread as I've spent the better part of the evening trying to get my MA401 to come up on my RedHat 8.0 laptop. (The linux drivers that came on the CDROM wouldn't compile, various other road-blocks like that)

I then did the following and was able to get on-line. (No promises, but maybe provides hopes for the desparate!)

1) Started up the Blue-line (or whatever its called) X11 GUI WM.

2) Opened the Network Device Control: Start(redhat symbol)-->System Tools --> Network Device Control

The Network Device Control dialog came up showing a list of network device (in my case only one: eth0 -- inactive. This was a vestige from my old NIC)

3) I selected eth0 then pressed "Configure..."

This put up the Network Configuration dialog.

4) I pressed "Add..."

This put up the Add new Device Type dialog (a wizard). First screen was "Select Device Type"

5) I selected "Wireless Connection" then clicked "Forward"

6) On the next screen I selected "Other wireless card" then clicked "forward"

7) On the next screen I selected from the list of adapters "defxx" (I'm assuming this is some sort of plain-jane standards-based NIC driver) I then clicked "forward..."

8) On the next screen, "Configure wireless connection", I set everything to appropriate to my 802.11 environment (mode:<managed>, network name (SSID)[*]Specified : Wireless; Key: <blank>) I then clicked "forward..."

9) On the next screen, "Configure network settings" I set up everything according to my router environment: Specifically, everything is DHCP - auto-get-everything from DHCP server. I clicked "forward..."

10) I don't remember exactly, but I think it asked me to save. If so, I said yes.

11) I then found myself back at the Network Device Control dialog. I selected my newly re-created eth0 then clicked the "Activate..." button.

To my shock the status for eth0 went to "activated" !!! I pinged my router: good. I pinged yahoo.com. good! I went to www.nytimes.com in Mozilla and, would you believe, it worked!


Caveats:
1) With all of the screwing around abortively trying to compile wlan and pcmcia-cs builds, I may have added some capability to RH8.0 that doesn't come stock. I do believe that I got pcmcia-cs to build and install so maybe something magical happened there.

2) I haven't really tested this too heavily so who knows! However, the connection speed seems good and nothing seems to be unexpectedly crashing...


Anyhow -- good luck to anyone else trying to get their MA401 up and running, and if anyone is able to get the above method to work for them, let me know!

-Dave

Hi all,
I would like to thank everyone for helping with my problem. It was actually much more simple than I was making it. After a complete re-install, I stuck to using precompiled RPMS instead of trying to compile stuff myself. I have a Netgear MA401RA. I added the lines in /etc/pcmcia/config as instructed earlier to use the orinoco drivers. I went to the "Network Device Control" gui and added an eth1 device using the vanilla Orinoco/Prism2 adapter. Activated the device (something I hadn't done previously) and everything worked great!!! Again, thanks all!

Jeff.

Hi all -

I read all your comments on this forum and understand that some of you could able to make this wireless card work. I went to the URL ( http://prism2.unixguru.raleigh.nc.us) and downloaded all the three bundles - base, module and interface, installed the packages iin the same order.

From Michael's posting, I understand that he modified the /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.opts to add his IP. I dont find any place to enter IP. Any help on that?

My current iwconfig looks like this:

lo - no wireless extensions

wlan0 - IEEE 802.11-b ESSID:"linux-wlan" Nickname:"linux_wlan"
Mode:Auto Channel:0 Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00

I have provided only the first two lines from it.

As you can see, linux_lan is NOT my SSID- rather it is "km_lan". Also the channel is 10. Where do I change these values?

When I do this from the command line:

#iwconfig wlan0 essid "km_lan" channel 10

I get this:

Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
SET failed on device wlan0; Function not implemented

Also as Jeff and Dave mentioned I tried to install a new network device with defxx as the card type and put all the correct ssid and channel and it couldnt be activated.

I've been spending 2 days on this and couldnt figure out a whole lot.

As someone asked the last 10 lines of 'dmesg' is as follows:

Prism2 card SN:99SA01000000
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.
p80211knetdev_hard_start_xmit: Tx attempt prior to association, frame dropped.

PLEASE HELP
Thanks
Mahesh

Any help please?

Thanks

All -

Please ignore my earlier posting.

From Finegan's earlier reply, this URL (http://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...01&pagenumber=1) helped to realized that MA401 and MA401RA are COMPLETELY different. So all I had to do is add 3 more lines in /etc/pcmcia/conf file for MA401RA and restarted the system - boom.... it worked like a beauty.

Thanks to all who helped. This is one fine forum to count on.

Mahesh

Go here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pcmcia-cs/
Download the pcmcia file.
Make sure that you have the source code of the Kernel installed on the computer.
extract the file.
Go to the sub directory.
follow the readme.
This works with most 3COM, Netgear and Cisco wireless cards.