# cisco Wi-Fi problems

## bryon

Ok i have been trying to get my Cisco Aironet 350 pci card to work for some time now.

I recompiled the kernel with pcmia support. 

I ran the cwinstall script that came with the card which put the modules in ther proper directories whitin /usr/src/pcmic-cs-3.2.3/

I did make config on /usr/src/pcmic-cs-3.2.3/

used the defults

then make all

and make install

What did I miss, what else do i need to do?

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## ben

 *bryon wrote:*   

> Ok i have been trying to get my Cisco Aironet 350 pci card to work for some time now.
> 
> I recompiled the kernel with pcmia support. 
> 
> I ran the cwinstall script that came with the card which put the modules in ther proper directories whitin /usr/src/pcmic-cs-3.2.3/
> ...

 

Hi bryon,

I don't have the pci card but the pccard air-pcm352 from cisco, and i should say it "just worked". So there are some infos and some more question.

I recompile the kernel (2.4.19) with:

network devices support-->Wireless Lan--> Wireless Lan (fixed) and Cisco Aironet and pcmcia Wireless cisco aironet as modules.

I installed it as well as System.map under /boot (prealably mounted) and modified grub/menu.lst accordingly

I restarted the notebook to run the new kernel.

Then, I emerged pcmcia-cs (i had no need for it prior to this card, because i use a 3com 32bit pccard wich run fine with kernel modules and hotplug)

I also emerged wireless-tools (and gkrellm-wireless).

The configuration for this card (ESSID, and so on) are in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts, though I did not have to touch it.

So now for some question:

Why do you feel the need for pcmcia-cs if your card  is a PCI one. I don't feel it necessary. But it may be necessary to modprobe or insmod airo the kernel module. And later to put it in /etc/modules.autoload.

What gives iwconfig?

Did you try a ifconfig ethx up where x is the next unused interface?

I hope this helped.

ben

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## bryon

I Folowed everything in the doc.  Let me go through my setup, i have a tinkpad A30 and a Cisco 350 aironet.  The thing is that when I put the card in it gives me the two beeps that tell me that it is working but when I do ifconfig there is no eth1 only my built in eth0.

 :Crying or Very sad: 

And when i do kismet_monitor under root I get 

 *Quote:*   

> root@Lappy bab # kismet_monitor 
> 
> Using /usr/local/etc/kismet.conf sources...
> 
> Enabling monitor mode for a cisco card on eth1
> ...

 

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## ben

 *bryon wrote:*   

> I Folowed everything in the doc.  Let me go through my setup, i have a tinkpad A30 and a Cisco 350 aironet.  The thing is that when I put the card in it gives me the two beeps that tell me that it is working but when I do ifconfig there is no eth1 only my built in eth0.
> 
> And when i do kismet_monitor under root I get 
> 
>  *Quote:*   root@Lappy bab # kismet_monitor 
> ...

 

Ok three things:

I did not suggest you did not read/follow instructions, but I did find your post missing a bit of explanation.

Second, I am under the impression that you have a pccard and not a pci nor minipci card. If this is correct, what are the result of iwconfig (from wireless-tools) and from cardctl status?

Furthermore, as you don't have an eth1 it is normal that kismet missed the eth1 files.

Your interface may be called wlan0, thus what gives iwconfig??

And third I have ACCEPT_KEYWORD=~x86 and kismet is still masked. Did you emerge yours, or compile by yourself?

Thanks

ben

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## oniq

Its my understanding that you use either the kernel PCMCIA, or PCMCIA-CS.  Although the PCMCIA-CS has some configuration options that are required, so I suppose you need them both.

If you hear to high beeps that means your card was recognized, and a driver was found successfully.  Check your logs (for me its /var/log/messages) and dmesg.  You can read my short howto article with my 3com card (substitute the drivers for your card where I go into the kernel config) here.

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## bryon

I am sorry if I had some parts missing.  But I will try to fill in the gaps now. The cisco 350  Aironet pcmcia.   I do have network devices support-->Wireless Lan--> Wireless Lan (fixed) and Cisco Aironet and pcmcia Wireless cisco aironet as modules.   I am not quite sure waht the " System.map under /boot (prealably mounted) and modified grub/menu.lst " is.  Under /etc/modules.autoload I have i82365, ds.  I downloaded and compiled kismet my self.  There does not seam to be any /var/log/messages files but there are other files that relate to things like kernel, cups, samba in the /var/log dir.  I have built in ethernet pci that is eth0 that is why the card should show up as eh1.  I think that is everything, any sugestions?

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## ben

 *bryon wrote:*   

> I am sorry if I had some parts missing.  But I will try to fill in the gaps now. The cisco 350  Aironet pcmcia.   I do have network devices support-->Wireless Lan--> Wireless Lan (fixed) and Cisco Aironet and pcmcia Wireless cisco aironet as modules.   I am not quite sure waht the " System.map under /boot (prealably mounted) and modified grub/menu.lst " is.  Under /etc/modules.autoload I have i82365, ds.  I downloaded and compiled kismet my self.  There does not seam to be any /var/log/messages files but there are other files that relate to things like kernel, cups, samba in the /var/log dir.  I have built in ethernet pci that is eth0 that is why the card should show up as eh1.  I think that is everything, any sugestions?

 

OK, let's go for some explanation:

1.- there are, as Apprentice told, possibly two version of the driver. One is the kernel driver airo and airo_cs, and the other is the PCMCIA_CS one (don't know the name). If your kernel configuration contain anything with pcmcia, then pcmcia_cs package will built the utility but no driver. If your kernel config exclude anything pcmcia then pcmcia_cs package will build the driver instead.

Personally, I use the kernel module and I have pcmcia enabled in the kernel. To install my air-pcm352, I had to enable the wireless-lan in the kernel. That is why I had to recompile the kernel and the modules and to install both and reboot. This was done with :

make menuconfig make dep make clean make bzImage modules modules_install. After what I mount the boot partition (here it is a separate and not automatically mounted partition), cp the resulting bzImage and System.map there, and tell grub about the new kernel. I then unmounted it, and rebooted the computer. More info on how to compile a kernel in the KERNEL HOWTO at www.linuxdoc.org.

Then and only then (with the new kernel running) I emerged pcmcia_cs. I had then to /etc/init.d/pcmcia start. I plugged the card and heard two high beeps. Here is what gives lsmod (as root under a terminal):

Module                  Size  Used by    Tainted: P  

airo_cs                 4000   0  (unused)

airo                   38464   1  [airo_cs]

ipt_LOG                 3488   1  (autoclean)

ipt_state                608   2  (autoclean)

iptable_filter          1792   1  (autoclean)

ip_tables              12416   3  [ipt_LOG ipt_state iptable_filter]

ip_conntrack_irc        2784   0  (unused)

ip_conntrack_ftp        4032   0  (unused)

ip_conntrack           16972   3  [ipt_state ip_conntrack_irc ip_conntrack_ftp]

parport_pc             14948   1  (autoclean)

lp                      6592   0  (autoclean)

parport                15744   1  (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]

opl3                   14148   1 

opl3sa                  4640   1 

sb                     34592   1  [opl3sa]

uart401                 7744   1  [opl3sa sb]

ad1848                 28192   1  [opl3sa]

soundbase             846464   1  [opl3 opl3sa sb uart401 ad1848]

sndshield              11820   0  [opl3 opl3sa sb uart401 ad1848 soundbase]

usb-storage            23832   0  (unused)

usb-uhci               24260   0  (unused)

3c59x                  27976   0 

rtc                     7708   0  (autoclean)

usbcore                64640   1  [usb-storage usb-uhci]

ide-cd                 31040   0  (autoclean)

sr_mod                 14456   0  (autoclean) (unused)

cdrom                  30016   0  (autoclean) [ide-cd sr_mod]

The interresting part is airo and airo_cs

2.- A word about debugging:

A lot of info is logged by your computer. The log are usually found under /var/log. They may be called /var/log/everything/current or /var/log/messages or /var/log/kernel* or /varl/log/pcmcia*. Your will have to look into with something like:

grep airo /var/log/* -R to find the right file. Then if you dont use a delayed logger (as metalog is one) you can tail -f /var/log/the_file to see what happens when you take out the card and reinsert it. Actually you can also with metalog if you first send it a -USR1 signal.

3.- It seems to me that you use the pcmcia_cs driver as you have ds and i82xxxxx in your module.autoload. The name of the right driver may well have nothing to do with airo, you will have to look for the name by yourself in the pcmcia_cs doc.

For further help it will be very interresting that you post the result of the following command (issued in a terminal)

dmesg

cardctl status

iwconfig (yes that is iWconfig and not ifconfig)

lsmod

Hope this help

Ben

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## bryon

below is the out put that Ben said I sould post, I do not get two hich piched beeps like i have heard that I shoudl get but one high piched then a low picked beep after that.  I do not use the kernel drivers just pcmica-cs, I had to disable the kernel for pcmica-sc to work.  

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> Linux PCMCIA Card Services 3.2.1
> 
>   kernel build: 2.4.20 #14 SMP Fri Feb 21 00:24:15 EST 2003
> ...

 

----------

## mr_neutron

I have a similar card (Cisco Aironet 340 PCMCIA wireless LAN adapter), and the only drivers that work for me are the 2.4.19 vanilla kernel drivers. 

With the pcmcia-cs drivers the card is not recognized, and with the 2.4.20 kernel drivers I get "kernel oops" and hard lockups when inserting/removing the card.

anyway, this is my working configuration:

kernel:

```

CONFIG_HOTPLUG=y

#

# PCMCIA/CardBus support

#

CONFIG_PCMCIA=m

CONFIG_CARDBUS=y

# CONFIG_TCIC is not set

# CONFIG_I82092 is not set

# CONFIG_I82365 is not set

#

# Wireless LAN (non-hamradio)

#

CONFIG_NET_RADIO=y

# CONFIG_STRIP is not set

# CONFIG_WAVELAN is not set

# CONFIG_ARLAN is not set

# CONFIG_AIRONET4500 is not set

# CONFIG_AIRONET4500_NONCS is not set

# CONFIG_AIRONET4500_PROC is not set

# CONFIG_AIRO is not set

# CONFIG_HERMES is not set

# CONFIG_PLX_HERMES is not set

# CONFIG_PCI_HERMES is not set

#

# Wireless Pcmcia cards support

#

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_HERMES is not set

CONFIG_AIRO_CS=m

CONFIG_NET_WIRELESS=y

#

# PCMCIA network device support

#

CONFIG_NET_PCMCIA=y

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_3C589 is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_3C574 is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_FMVJ18X is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_PCNET is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_AXNET is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_NMCLAN is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_SMC91C92 is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_XIRC2PS is not set

# CONFIG_ARCNET_COM20020_CS is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_IBMTR is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_XIRCOM is not set

# CONFIG_PCMCIA_XIRTULIP is not set

# CONFIG_NET_PCMCIA_RADIO is not set

```

Like ben said, you still have to emerge pcmcia-cs and wireless-tools for the startup scripts and config files. I also added "wavelan" to my USE variables, because I read somwhere that this would tell the pcmcia-cs ebuild not to install any drivers.

I also had to add this line to my /etc/conf.d/pcmcia to get the "ds" module loaded without errors by the pcmcia startup script:

```
PCIC="yenta_socket"
```

Don't care too much about the beeps. Some Laptops (like mine) have no "Beeper", and all you will hear when you insert the card is some crackling from the audio speakers.

----------

## riceboy50

I have the Cisco Aironet 350 PCI wireless adapter. I ran into problems installing it when I was using Gentoo 1.4_rc1 but recently I rebuilt my system and decided to give wireless-tools a shot. You can now set up your wireless card using them. try "emerge -p wireless-tools" and research wireless-tools and read the man page for iwconfig once you emerge them.

By the way, when I was setting up my airo350 using the cisco software, I used kpciinstall instead of cwinstall. I had to configure my card using the ACU in X. Try running the command "acu" from an Xterm and then configure accordingly. I used the Enterprise Networking options. Good luck with that package if you stick with it because it's very picky. You also need to run bcard on startup to have the card initialize on boot (after you have setup all the rest of that stuff) Whew, I'm glad that wireless-tools works now, that's all I have to say.

P.S. you don't need any pcmcia support installed in the kernel whatsoever to get the Cisco Aironet 350 PCI adapter working. The airo module from the 2.4.20-gentoo-r5 kernel works fine. Cheers  :Smile: 

----------

## jpeterson_me

Check the firmware version. There is a problem with versions newer than 4.25.30 You may have to put the card in a windows machine and downgrade the firmware with the ACU utility.

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## dnatural18

If you have a thinkpad, and you have a intergrated wireless nic, you have to use the mpi350 driver, not the pcmcia or kernel driver.

emerge mpi350-driver

MiniPCI (mpi) are cards that are usually built into a system

PCMCIA cards are the ones that you buy in the store and shove into the open slot on the side of your laptop.

- Antares

----------

## pathfnder

I'm new to trying to use PCMCIA, so bear with me on which config files do what please.

I'm running a thinkpad 390X (pIII 450Mhz) after fiddling and changing kernel options and modules, I have the cardmgr running now, and it does detect my card.  It identifies the card correctly, loads modules, and under info center, identifies the card as "Aironet PC 4800" as it should.

I've downloaded and comppilled Cisco's utilities (acu intermittantly locks up) but have been unable to even get the lights on the card to blink or do ANYTHING with any of the utilities.

Here's the output of everthing I know of to give for troubleshooting, if anyone wants to see anything else, let me know what:

IWCONFIG:

```
bash-2.05b# iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.

tap0      no wireless extensions.

eql       no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

Warning: Driver for device eth1 has been compiled with version 176

of Wireless Extension, while this program is using version 15.

Some things may be broken...

Warning: Driver for device eth1 recommend version 228 of Wireless Extension,

but has been compiled with version 176, therefore some driver features

may not be available...

eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:""  Nickname:" m)Ä }^Ãà3;K<m)Ä"

          Mode:Ad-Hoc  Frequency:2.412GHz  Cell: 8C:20:9C:C5:78:39

          Bit Rate:-1.0178e+06kb/s   Tx-Power=-2147483648 dBm   Sensitivity=0/0

          RTS thr=582 B   Fragment thr=0 B

          Power Management period:50.8713s  mode:All packets received

          Link Quality:32/255  Signal level:94/100  Noise level:0/0

          Rx invalid nwid:1201859823  Rx invalid crypt:-1056243711  Rx invalid frag:0

          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:-1571452126   Missed beacon:0

bash-2.05b#
```

cardctl status:

```
bash-2.05b# cardctl status

Socket 0:

  5V 16-bit PC Card

  function 0: [ready]

Socket 1:

  no card

bash-2.05b#
```

lsmod:

```
bash-2.05b# lsmod

Module                  Size  Used by    Tainted: PF

airo_cs                 3876   0  (unused)

airo                  107392   0  [airo_cs]

esssolo1               24168   0

soundcore               3588   4  [esssolo1]

ds                      7560   4  [airo_cs]

i82365                 41920   2

pcmcia_core            50400   0  [airo_cs ds i82365]

ide-scsi                7920   0

pegasus                14040   1

usb-storage            58200   0  (unused)

hid                    13108   0  (unused)

uhci                   23808   0  (unused)

usbcore                57152   1  [pegasus usb-storage hid uhci]

bash-2.05b#
```

dmesg:

```
bash-2.05b# dmesg

0-0x04ff: clean.

cs: IO port probe 0x0800-0x08ff: clean.

cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.

cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: clean.

airo: Doing fast bap_reads

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: MAC could not be enabled

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

eth1: index 0x05: Vcc 5.0, Vpp 5.0, irq 10, io 0x0100-0x013f

eth0: no IPv6 routers present

solo1: version v0.19 time 09:48:06 Sep 29 2003

solo1: joystick port at 0x10f9

solo1: ddma base address: 0x10d0

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceed.......

    ---Lots of repeats---

      ........xceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo:  Probing for PCI adapters

airo:  Finished probing for PCI adapters

airo: Doing fast bap_reads

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: MAC could not be enabled

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

eth1: index 0x05: Vcc 5.0, Vpp 5.0, irq 10, io 0x0100-0x013f

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

airo: Max tries exceeded when issueing command

```

Here's ifconfig as an afterthought:

```
bash-2.05b# ifconfig

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:05:1B:00:52:34

          inet addr:130.101.19.102  Bcast:130.101.19.127  Mask:255.255.255.224

          inet6 addr: fe80::205:1bff:fe00:5234/10 Scope:Link

          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:1423 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:908 errors:115 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:115

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100

          RX bytes:1455228 (1.3 Mb)  TX bytes:115714 (113.0 Kb)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback

          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0

          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1

          RX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

          RX bytes:500 (500.0 b)  TX bytes:500 (500.0 b)

bash-2.05b#
```

----------

