# Wireless Networking Issues

## xkalibur1554

I have a Sony Vaio Laptop with a built in Prism 2.5 Wavelan (rev 01) wireless card.  I am trying to get it to work, and it will not.   I have emerged wireless-tools, and the hostap drivers.  however when i type iwconfig or ifconfig, i get lo and eth0.  it says there are no wireless extensions, and isnt even seeing the card.  is there any way for me to fix this?  if you could help me, i would appreciate it.  thank you.[/i]

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## zepto

Do you have Wireless extension enabled in your kernel. On a 2.6.9 kernel you can find it here:

```
  Networking support  --->

    [*] Network device support

    <M>   Dummy net driver support

          Wireless LAN (non-hamradio)  --->

            [*] Wireless LAN drivers (non-hamradio) & Wireless Extensions
```

Not 100% sure about it, but think you need this set regardless of driver?

Z

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## xkalibur1554

yes i ave them enabled.  i had this card working when i had the 2.4 kernel, but now it will not work with anything, how do i get hostap to work?  or how do i configure it?  i still get no wireless extensions.  thank you in advance.

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## jakubc

do you have the drivers loaded? probably do, but it never hurts to ask:-))

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## xkalibur1554

ive tried to load all types of drivers.  i modprobe every module, but cannot get it to work.  when you say load drivers, is that modprobe does?

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## jakubc

Ok, ndiswrapper http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ claims it knows how to translate this chipset.  Check the link, under "list" is a list of supported chipsets.  Try this... 

You were trying multiple drivers?  Which drivers were you using (I presume you searched for the appropriate drivers for the chipset...)?

good luck with ndiswrapper!

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## xkalibur1554

i have installed ndiswrapper, but cannot find the right windows driver.  for my computer it is a .exe file, so no .inf or .sys, it is a Intersil Prism 2.5 Wavelan built in card.  can you help anymore?  thank you.

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## zonk

actually, hostAP is the right choice for a prism 2.5

what exactly have you done so far to get the card running? that might help identify steps you may have missed.

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## xkalibur1554

i opened the make menuconfig or whatever and enabled the radio and wireless in the kernel.  then i the make && make modules or something like that.  i then emerged hostap-drivers, hostapd, and hostap-utils.  then it comes up no wireless extensions when i iwconfig, and I constantly get a hostapd cannot find service net.wlan0...

i do not know how to fix this at all.  all i know is with a 2.4 kernel linux-wlan-ng worked, but nothing does now.  if you can help i would greatly appreciate it.  thank you.

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## xkalibur1554

ok i have gotten hostap drivers to work, the problem is that it is using b.  my card is a g and so is the network.

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## zonk

what are the results of

```
iwlist ethX rate
```

and

```
iwlist ethX scan
```

the first should tell you the speed rates your NIC adapter supports under linux with the current drivers. the second should tell you more about access points your card can see, including their speed ratings. check for the one that you want to connect to. if both support a higher speed, you can simply use

```
iwconfig ethX rate 54M
```

to switch to 802.11a/g speed. you can also specify that in your network configuration file in /etc/conf.d/wireless

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## xkalibur1554

for rate i got

4 availiable

1

2

5.5

11

for scan, it says none because i have version 17 instead of 18 extensions

i know it is a g card, but it only comes up b

do you know how to fix this?

thank you

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## zonk

 *Quote:*   

> Q: Does Host AP driver support IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g?  Does it support 
> 
> chipsets other than Prism 2/2.5/3?
> 
> A: Host AP driver supports only Intersil Prism chipsets, versions 2, 2.5 
> ...

 

oops, i'm sorry. it appears hostAP only supports 802.11b. so you'd have to use wlan-ng again in order to get 802.11g speeds with a prism 2.5 card, as far as i know. the downside to wlan-ng is that it doesn't support wireless tools.

*wasn't aware of those things previously* sorry about that.

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## xkalibur1554

do you know what the module is for linux-wlan-ng?  or how to completely remove hostap?

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## zonk

no, i don't. however, there are plenty of HOWTOs to be found both on this board and google.

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