# What happened to madwifi? [Probably Solved]

## pdr

I try to "emerge -upvD world" and it tells me that madwifi-tools-0.1401.20060117 is masked (and thus blocking the update for madwifi-driver). Yes, I do have ~x86 for madwifi-driver in my /etc/portage/package.keywords.

But if I comment out the unmasking of madwifi-driver in package.keywords, it tells me to run "emaint --check world" because everything that can match my emerged madwifi-driver (because madwifi-tools is) is masked!

Do I just have to wait a few days before I can do an update?Last edited by pdr on Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:48 pm; edited 3 times in total

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## PaulBredbury

The 20060117 versions are keyworded, that's all.

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## pdr

Do'h!

For some reason it didn't cross my mind that I needed to unmask madwifi-tools too. Thanks.

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## pdr

Well, unmasking madwifi-tools allowed me to emerge - and for the latest and greatest to completely bork my wireless.

ath0 is no longer recognized as an interface - I have to use "ifconfig wifi0 up" instead.

The above makes wifi0 a recognized interface, but cannot get wireless extensions (iwconfig) to work with it AT ALL. I try (anything) "iwconfig wifi0 mode Managed" - or ".. Auto" and it says its an unrecognized mode. Same with other commands. This is unlike the error if I try, say, "iwconfig eth0 mode Managed" - in which case I get that the operation isn't supported - which makes sense since it's my ethernet interface...

Don't know who mucked this up - I updated both basetools and madwifi-driver/tools. I am not using the wpa-supplicant stuff, nor the initscripts for wireless (why? because I wrote my system before that stuff existed and was extremely happy with my setup until the "ath0" interface disappeared and iwconfig decided to blow chunks).

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## Adrien

Hi!   :Smile: 

have you read madwifi-documentation in /usr/share/doc/madwifi-<version>/README ?

Here's what one should do after upgrading to the latest version of madwifi-driver:

```
# wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta

# emerge madwifi-tools
```

The first command creates the usual ath0 interface you can then configure withwireless-tools.

The madwifi-tools reemerge was necessary for me as ath0 wasn't created on startup after reboot   :Confused: 

No it works just fine for me. 

Good luck!   :Smile: 

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## pdr

Yep, finally found that after seeing a new rules script in my /etc/udev/rules.d directory.

Unfortunately that appears broken (out of order initialization?), so that it is not getting run...

I changed my scripts so that they call wlanconfig to create my ath0 node. Also changed them to not call "iwconfig ath0 mode Managed", since (1) that appears to no longer be supported, and (2) also appears to be handled by wlanconfig being setup up as a "station". So now the order of execution for me is:

1. wlanconfig ath0 ... to create the ath0 interface AND put it in managed mode.

2. iwconfig ath0 ... to set the essid, channel, wep key, etc.

3. Do the remaining stuff I did (ifconfig ath0 up, set the default route and gateway, update my dns servers).

So its back up (yeah!), but appears a bit suckee. When I first go into X and try web pages, get these moments when something ain't good and takes forever to do a name lookup. But at other times runs as fast as the old. Am doing an emerge right now (console, not X) and seems to zoom right along.

However, this is probably the drivers instead of the tools...

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## Adrien

 *pdr wrote:*   

> However, this is probably the drivers instead of the tools...

 

Of course, I'm just tellin' you that because wlanconfig wouldn't use to create ath0 on startup but it worked fine after reemerging madwifi-tools...  :Rolling Eyes: 

Glad it works anyway!   :Smile: 

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## RtrentC

After reading through the posts in this thread I did as was suggested of running wlanconfig command then re-emerging madwif-tools. At this point I am still having problems with it not creating ath0 in time for the starting of net.ath0 in runlevel default. As a bit of a kludge I have in my local.start file. udevstart, /etc/init.d/net.ath0 start, /etc/init.d/apache2 start /etc/init.d/ntpd start, /etc/init.d/boinc start.

This does get ath0 up and running as well as my webserver, ntpd , and boinc. But it is a bit of a kludge. I hate having to do it this way rather than allowing the runlevel control bring the services up. I would appreciate any help on this problem.

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## Adrien

 *RtrentC wrote:*   

> After reading through the posts in this thread I did as was suggested of running wlanconfig command then re-emerging madwif-tools. At this point I am still having problems with it not creating ath0 in time for the starting of net.ath0 in runlevel default. As a bit of a kludge I have in my local.start file. udevstart, /etc/init.d/net.ath0 start, /etc/init.d/apache2 start /etc/init.d/ntpd start, /etc/init.d/boinc start.
> 
> This does get ath0 up and running as well as my webserver, ntpd , and boinc. But it is a bit of a kludge. I hate having to do it this way rather than allowing the runlevel control bring the services up. I would appreciate any help on this problem.

 

Hi!   :Smile: 

I figured out it's not a question of reemerging madwifi-tools.

It seems the udev rule created by madwifi-tools package only works with udev-081 or higher.

You guys should try upgrading udev to version 081-r1. It works just fine here.   :Smile: 

Have fun!   :Wink: 

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## N-S

How do I fix my kernel panics with madwifi-tools-0.1401.20060117, madwifi-driver-0.1401.20060117?

Sory for asking as simple as this, but I have no clue what kind of information is needed to help solve it.

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## Adrien

 *N-S wrote:*   

> How do I fix my kernel panics with madwifi-tools-0.1401.20060117, madwifi-driver-0.1401.20060117?
> 
> Sory for asking as simple as this, but I have no clue what kind of information is needed to help solve it.

 

Don't worry, I have no clue either.   :Razz:   But some people (including me) experience kernel panics with wireless modules sometimes.

If you have 4kb stacks enabled in your kernel (kernel hacking section), remove them, then recompile the kernel and reboot. It may help.

+++

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## N-S

ah, ok

I'll try that with the new kernel out yesterday.

I also got a tip to use onoe instead of amrr.

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