# cannot install with Orinoco wireless card

## butters

net-setup wlan0 doesn't work even if orinoco_cs, wvlan_cs, pcmcia_core, and i82365 are all loaded.  

ifconfig wlan0 

doesn't recognize the card's MAC address. 

iwconfig wlan0 essid "station id" 

says that I can't set essid on the wlan0.  what's wrong?

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## sproket81

I have an orinoco-based pcmcia card, and I have quit using the WLAN drivers because they don't accept configuration with the iwconfig tool. The default drivers that came with the pcmcia-cs package work fine for my card, however and I can set them with the relatively intuitive iwconfig.

I still keep the wlan drivers around though for use with kismet.   :Wink: 

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## butters

Are there any drivers on the rc_4 LiveCD that work with the orinoco based cards?

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## latexer

Check in dmesg after you've loaded the modules. It should the network card getting detected. Normally with the orinoco_cs drivers, this card will be eth0 or eth1, not wlan0. If it isn't detected, make sure the pcmcia init script is started by doing

```
/etc/init.d/pcmcia status
```

If it doesn't say the script is started, start it up by doing

```
/etc/init.d/pcmcia start
```

You can then see what in the way of network cards are enabled by doing

```
ifconfig -a
```

You should then be able to go on configuring with iwconfig

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## butters

I found a perfectly workable solution in Knoppix.  It just works, out of the box, and always. . .  at least on every machine I've tried it on.  I've always ran it in runlevel 2, though, because I never work on any machines with more than 64 MB of RAM anymore, it seems :)

I see no reason not to install using Knoppix, sudo passwd root, usermod -d /root -m root, and then pick up the gentoo install guide from fdisk; perhaps the gentoo developers should look into repackaging Knoppix to make it a Gentoo platform instead of debian, capable of installing to the harddisk.  GRP is eventually (once the now long overdue 1.4 final is released) gunna become the de facto stage 4.  This auto-installer could become the stage 5 that makes windows look plain silly.

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## Minos

You shouldn't need wvlan_cs.  You should also take note that orinoco_cs names its interface eth0, not wvlan0.

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## hansk75

Try installing linux-wlan-ng.

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## mikepolniak

The kernel pcmcia drivers for thr orinoco card work fine. And if you want to use monitor mode for Kismet you can patch the kernel driver with the  

orinoco monitor mode patch from 

http://airsnort.shmoo.com/orinocoinfo.html

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## butters

The knoppix CD uses the hermes module, which in turn uses orinoco and orinoco_cs.  What is hermes and do I need it once I get the system to boot stand-alone?  Right now I can't get it to boot, not even in single user mode.  I probably need to do some more research and fix some mystery problem in my kernel configuration.  It currently dumps the values in the registers and stack and gives a kernel panic error.  I can't tell where in the kernel load it happens, since I can't scroll up the console with shift-pageup.  If I use knoppix and chroot into /mnt/gentoo, will the dmesg from the last gentoo boot persist?

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## dirtboy

Here's how I got mine to work.  First, pcmcia-cs did not work after I compiled it.  I had to use pcmcia-cs in conjuction with kernel drivers.

I emerged pcmcia-cs and added pcmcia to runlevel default.  Then I recompiled my kernel with cardbus support and the Orinoco drivers as modules (this makes the hermes module).  For my PCMCIA controller, none of the modules supplied with pcmcia-cs worked, but yenta_socket created by compiling the kernel did.  I edited /etc/conf.d/pcmcia to use PCIC="yenta_sockets" instead of i82365.  That allowed by card to be detected by cardmgr and loads the hermes drivers perfectly.  I then set my options in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts, copied /etc/init.d/net.eth0 to eth1 and edited it accordingly, then added iface_eth1="dhcp" to /etc/conf.d/net.  

Whew.  Not easy, but it works great now.  My main problem was that pcmica-cs did not work correctly with my controller when I used te i82365 module.  Every card I put in was detected as a memory card and loaded memory-cs.  Basically, I am fooling pcmcia-cs into using kernel drivers, which shouldn't work but does.  If it helps any, my pcmcia controller is a TI PCI1250 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01).

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## milkdi

a kernel panic probably means you didn't INCLUDE the filesystems into the kernel (they can't be modules)

in the very first place: did you load module ds when u booted w/ gentoo cd?

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## butters

milkdi, gentoo's hw detection loaded ds on boot.

I agree with dirtboy.  The Knoppix CD loaded yenta_socket instead of i82365 and it worked.  So I emerge pcmcia-cs (and again after the first boot as the install docs suggest), have cardbus support in the kernel with orinoco compiled as modules, even though pcmcia-cs's documentation says not to use this kernel option.  This should make hermes module?  And yenta_socket is compiled for the kernel as well (at least with these options).  Do I need to put anything in /etc/modules.autoload?

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## dirtboy

No, as long as you have added pcmcia-cs to runlevel default, it will load yenta_socket at boot when the service starts.  You just have to compile the cardbus drivers as modules so that you get the file yenta_socket.o that the service can load.

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## weazy

when i try to insmod yenta_socket it says no module by that name found.....

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## godoffooz

dirtboy has the perfect setup to get any oricono_cs based setup to work.

I read other threads on the forum and everyone seems to go down the route of compiling the kernel to not include specific wireless modules and then installing pcmcia-cs.  When I tried that yesterday, I wasn't getting a orinoco_cs driver installed anywhere on my computer.  Maybe the current build of pcmcia-cs doesn't have the orinoco_cs driver for some reason (I notice that it applies some orinoco patch when it starts emerge).

However, if you recompile your kernel with pcmcia cardbus as a module (giving you yenta_socket) and you compile in the orinoco kernel module (giving you orinoco_cs) and then you emerge pcmcia_cs and edit /etc/conf.d/pcmcia to set the value to PCIC to be "yenta_socket", when you start up pcmcia (after running update-modules) it will use yenta_socket, find your orinoco card and load everything up correctly.

The benefit of the orinoco kernel drivers is that they work perfectly with wireless interface tools like iwconfing and wavemon.

If you card isn't being detected, check /etc/pcmcia/config.  I needed to add an entry that had the manfid for my linksys wpc11 card because it wasn't being detected by the normal config file.  You can get that information about your card by running cardctl info after you have emerged pcmcia-cs.

I hope that this helps someone out there who is stuggling to get wireless to work... I feel your pain.

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## goanuj

can the orinoco wireless card be used without the yenta_socket module?

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## dirtboy

Definitely.  The yenta_socket module is the cardbus controller module for some laptops (it seems to work with a lot of newer laptops).  You have to have some kind of cardbus driver loaded, though, in order for the PCMCIA ports to work at all.  If not yenta_socket then try the i82365 module.  It all depends on what cardbus controller comes in your laptop.

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## weazy

this presupposes that the chipset is orinoco_cs compliant. some of the cards that are called orinoco gold have hermes2 which IS NOT orinoco_cs compliant.

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## dirtboy

Kinda.  My problem was that the cardbus controller wasn't supported properly by the pcmcia-cs modules.  The cardmgr detects when a card is inserted, gets the identifier from the card itself, then checks its config files to find out what module to load for a found identifier.  The main problem I was having is that cardmgr could not get an ident from the card, so it always loaded the catchall module, memory_cs.  The only cardbus module that worked was yenta_socket, but pcmcia-cs doesn't give you this modeul, only the kernel does.  So, what I did was get pcmcia-cs installed on the system so that I have all the scripts and config files, then compile kernel modules to replace the ones that pcmcia-cs compiles.  The scripts don't know the difference.  If you have the correct modules compiled, it doesn't matter what card you stick in, as long as its identifier appears in list.

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## y0gi

got every thing goin they way described in this list but now it is trying to load the prism2 drivers instead of the orinoco drivers

cardctl is correctly recognizing the card 

dont know where it is getting the idea to go for prism2 instead of orinoco

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## hulk2nd

from /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.conf

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## y0gi

I modified /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.cong and it  appears to be loading correctly now

now has any one been able to get airtraf working

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## y0gi

ok it is loading the right drivers . however they dont seem to be working (very limited at most)

it wont change channel (stuck on channel 10)

wont go into monitor moad 

and many other thins

any ideas?

thanks

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