# Cisco 340/350 PCMCIA Wireless Cards  -- They work?

## n8xja

I am new to gentoo -- and before I get too far into this, I was curious if anyone else is using the 340/350 wireless cards from cisco and how big of a pain, if any, was it to get it going?

thanks

Tony

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## oniq

Quick search on Google resulted in a page detailing instructions for the installation, on cisco.com.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps441/products_tech_note09186a00800c6a9c.shtml

Do people ever use google anymore? ;D

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## n8xja

First, thank you oniq for the response -- really -- I mean it.   too often questions are asked and they go unaswered.  

The question was really how much of a pain is it under linux.   I have been at it long enough to know that it does not always work as advertise -- so reading a white paper on cisco's site isn't exactly a solid answer (and I read that earlier without needing google).   So I'll ask again -- is anyone using it, is it reliable, is it ...... you know, all the questions you would ask before blowing away a laptop HD that you use every day?  

Sorry if my first question wasn't specific enough and again oniq -- I do appreciate your response.

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## jobeus

My friend got it to work.  :Smile:  I'll try and direct him here to tell you his story. It took a while though and wasn't nearly as simple as my Lucent Orinoco wireless card.  :Smile: 

It _IS_ possible though... Know that.  :Wink: 

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## mr_fudd

I did indeed get a Cisco Aironet 340 to work. There's really no story to tell. I had to play with the some pcmcia drivers for a bit, but that's a seperate issue. The card works perfectly without any special setup, just slide it in and wait for the pretty green flashing light!

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## Cheesefoam

I got my Aironet 350 to work, and in an all-LEAP authenticated environment.  There's a couple of tricks, though to getting it running well.  First of all, I've noticed that the Cisco linux driver has issues sometimes if the connection signal strength drops and the connection drops even for a second - the adapter reathenticates, but linux thinks that the adapter is offline and the whole net.ethX service needs to be restarted.

(I should mention this applies only to kernels 2.4.20 and below.  I haven't tried it with .21, and I know for a fact it is b0rked in 2.5.67).

To get the best performance and stability (I haven't had any problems with link dropping this way), set up your kernel as follows (This is for the PCMCIA version of the Aironet 350):

General Setup

PCMCIA/Cardbus Support:    Disabled

Network Device Support

Wireless LAN

         Wireless LAN (non-hamradio):    Kernel

          (All other drivers disabled)

Compile your kernel, then get the Cisco Aironet drivers and extract them.  The ones in Portage don't work well - get the driver package direct from Cisco for the moment.  Run the "kpciinstall" script, and it will set up the utility binaries and the driver modules for you.  Then make sure to install PCMCIA-CS.

Edit /etc/conf.d/net and make all settings for your adapter as per usual.  Normally, just DHCP.

Last, create a new net.ethX file in /etc/init.d/.  Edit it to include the following line:

After

```

ebegin "Bringing ${IFACE} up"

```

Put in 

```

sleep 2

/opt/cisco/bin/bcard

/opt/cisco/bin/leapscript <USERNAME> <PASSWORD>

```

Also make sure that "need pcmcia" is in the depend() section.

The last line is only necessary if you operate in a LEAP environment, and you should make sure only root can read the file, since the password and username will be stored cleartext.  

Reboot your machine.  In KDE/Fluxbox/Gnome/Whatever, run /opt/cisco/bin/acu, and set the card parameters to whatever is most appropriate for you.  Exit, and changes will be saved.

At this point, open up a prompt, and try to start the adapter.  

```

/etc/init.d/net.ethX start

```

Where ethX is whetever adapter you have it assigned to (for me it is eth1).

The script will fire up PCMCIA-CS, and your card should hum to life.

do:

```

rc-update add net.ethX default

```

And there you go.

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## rubicon

did you also have to do anything to /etc/conf.d/net

I am running 2.6.1 and trying to get my 350 working.

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## feliperal

 *Cheesefoam wrote:*   

> I got my Aironet 350 to work, and in an all-LEAP authenticated environment.  There's a couple of tricks, though to getting it running well.  First of all, I've noticed that the Cisco linux driver has issues sometimes if the connection signal strength drops and the connection drops even for a second - the adapter reathenticates, but linux thinks that the adapter is offline and the whole net.ethX service needs to be restarted.
> 
> (I should mention this applies only to kernels 2.4.20 and below.  I haven't tried it with .21, and I know for a fact it is b0rked in 2.5.67).
> 
> To get the best performance and stability (I haven't had any problems with link dropping this way), set up your kernel as follows (This is for the PCMCIA version of the Aironet 350):
> ...

 

Just to mention, the above posters used most likely the Cisco based drivers instead of the kernel ones.  The Cisco ones are shitty and rather dated.  I couldn't get them working with my powerbook, probably because the utilties and drivers were binaries for x86 not ppc.

If anyone got them working on a 2.6+ kernel, please give a step by step explanation how you got them set up.  I compiled airo_cs and airo as modules, and also yenta_socket and ds.  I have also set ISA support.

I set pcmcia-cs to boot level.  but, when booting, it loads with the error message : unable to get info on the Cisco Wireles 350 adapter.

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## stgreek

On my laptop the Aironet 340 works fine with the 2.4.24 kernel. All I did was load yenta_socket,airo_cs and pcmcia modules at startup. WEP works fine and is easy to install. I also advise against Cisco binary drivers, harder to get to work and the tools aren't really useful.

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## unix

hi,

i have an error when he try to start airo_cs:

 *Quote:*   

> warning: loading /lib/modules/2.4.22-gentoo-r5/pcmcia/airo_cs.o will taint the kernel: non-GPL license-MPL
> 
> See http://www.tux.org/lkml/#export-tainted for information about tainted modules
> 
> module airo_cs loaded, with warnings

 

but in lsmod i can see the loaded module airo_cs.

and my question is, must i run rc-update pcmcia default?

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## milkypostman

I havn't tried leap yet ( i will soon ) but as of now i got the card to start up and get seen.  You have to have pcmcia in your default runlevel as it loads the kernel modules.  However, my major issue is that even though i can do an iwlist and get a list, i cannot tell my card only to use a certain AP.  I bought this damn card thinking it would work but no dice so far.  At least it can see it.... now just playing with it is my deal.

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## Cheesefoam

Well, you *could* get them to work with the 2.6.x series kernels, but Cisco in their infinite lack of intelligence has decided to make their stuff "Made for Redhat Only" forever.

<rant>

They removed the 2.0 package from their site and uploaded in its place a 2.1 package which is a complete nightmare.  The binaries are now compiled against libsigc++ and gtkmm.  It wouldn't be so bad except you MUST have libsigc++ 1.0 and gtkmm 1.2.

And only those.

Makes it near impossible to install the utilities.  And the new install script is simply awful.

</rant>

Point being, however, if you do still have a copy of the old 2.0 driver package around somewhere, here is what you have to do to make it work properly:

Compile your kernel with pcmcia support and the built-in Aironet drivers

Manually untar ther driver package into a temp directory.

run "./kpciinstall -iu" to install only the Cisco utilities and skip the drivers.

As root, run the ACU in X and set your card's config.

Edit net.ethX and add the following lines (here is where it gets tricky), just after the line which has "/sbin/dhcpcd ${dhcpcd_IFACE} ${IFACE}", deleting the dhcpcd line and replacing it with the one shown below.  The last line is appropriate for LEAP only.

UPDATED (see next post)

```

/sbin/dhcpcd ${dhcpcd_IFACE} ${IFACE} &

/opt/cisco/bin/acu

/opt/cisco/bin/leapscript <username> <password>

sleep 2

```

I dont have access to the cd which I backed up those old drivers on to, but I will take a look tonight.  If you plaintext your password for LEAP, make sure to chmod 600 the init script.

I'm awful irked about the new drivers though.  It wouldn't be so bad if the old ones were still around...

UPDATE:  I did some Google trawling and found someone who still mirrors the drivers... until Cisco gets on their case that is.

http://wireless.ucr.edu/drivers.htmLast edited by Cheesefoam on Fri Jun 25, 2004 4:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Cheesefoam

I did some more in-depth examination of the Cisco drivers under 2.6 kernels and found the following (as well as needing to make a clarification to my above post).

First, the clarification:  In order to get your card to log into a LEAP environment, you will need to add an "&" to the end of the line that has the dhcpcd command in it:

```

/sbin/dhcpcd ${dhcpcd_IFACE} ${IFACE} 

```

becomes

```

/sbin/dhcpcd ${dhcpcd_IFACE} ${IFACE} &

```

The reason for this is that the dhcpcd command also activates the interface, and must be done prior to running bcard and leapscript.

[hr]

Now for the second bit.  I have had the impression for quite some time that the best 2.6.x kernel, bar none, was the gentoo-2.6.3-r1 kernel.    Most importantly, it would appear that at some point during the development of the kernel past this point, something changed in the kernel drivers for the aironet cards, rendering them inoperable with the cisco utilities.  I know this for a fact with gentoo-2.6.7-r5, because under an identical kernel config and script setup, the card will not authenticate.  I do not, as yet, know why this is the case - only that I suggest you stick with gentoo-2.6.3-r1 for the time being until this is fixed.

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## Cheesefoam

OK, I finally got the new Aironet utilities to work.  Turns out it is not as hard as it looks, as long as you just go ahead and give up on getting the ACU to work.

These utilities work fine with the newer 2.6.5+ kernels - I'm typing this on a system using a Cisco Aironet 350 PCMCIA card on a LEAP-authenticated network, using the kernel drivers for gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.7-r8.

The ebuild for the utilities is located here.

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## Säck

I have a few question about wireless access.

I just bought a zyxell 660HW ADSL Router. I won a Cisco 350 pcmcia card a long time ago and now it's time to get it working under linux since I have finnaly a wireless acces point.

From what I have heard/read LEAP-authenticated network only work with CISCO access-points, so I can't use that, am I right? 

My router supports WPA, but  since it's a 802.11i standard, and the card is 802.11b (guess b was before i) my client doesn't suppport WPA, or is there a way to get that working?

So, all there's left is WEP, and that is not really that safe. Do I have to have the Aironet utilities to set the WEP key on my card or can I use the wireless-tools for linux?

Is there another way to make my network a little bit safer?

Edit:

My access point also supports EAP with a RADIUS server. But this is not the same thing as LEAP, isn't it. And I nead a special RADUIS server? Would this be possible with the CISCO-cards?

Thanks for the help

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