WLAN AP for 2.0

[Davesworld]

I am using a Cisco AIR-CB21AG-A-K9 in a pci to pcmcia bridge in a Raq 3i I had upgraded the cpu on a few years back and this combo works. I also made a grotesque SSID since I have nosy people with iPhones near here trying to piggy back.

 Getting back to where we left off three years ago, the pci bus on the Cobalts does not init cards. Most pci cards are self initializing but not many wlan cards. I also tried a Cisco AIR-PI21AG-A-K9 and the system saw it, loaded the ath5k and related but the radio just could not be seen by anything. The pcmcia bridge takes care of the pci init so that is why it works. We came up with a lot of theories but most were false. It's not lack of power on the pci slot nor which pci revision. It's a shortcoming of the system design. If we only had a wlan pci card with a pci to pci bridge chip on it we might be in business.

I did have to change the install script for the addon to look for cobalt instead of i486 since that is what is in the general functions file in Raqcop 2 RC1 for the purpose of raqcop unique updates to prevent confusion with standard PC IPCop. I also had to add -cobalt to the kernel name it looks for.

I have quite a collection of PCI 802.11 G PCI cards from the last failures. My pcmcia card actually will do A through G,  so will the PCI version.

I have a old Cisco 802.11b card that actually was a pci card with a fixed cardbus card installed so it works on a Cobalt. I really wish they still made them like that. The Raqs look neat with an antenna sticking up in the back.

There are a lot of advantages to having the AP built in. I had been using Cisco 1231 Access Points but they won't give me any more free firmware updates and the web gui is slooowwww.  

What we really need is a draft N that works. It'll give it the porcupine effect.

This is really a nice addon and complements the superior wlan support in the 2.6 kernel, I like this addon very much, weizen_42.  

[weizen_42]

I'm slightly curious about the drivers you've kept?  Are those ones tested to work? Or have you guessed?

[Davesworld]

I was trying to prevent duplicates. I pulled out the ones that are already present in the kernel. I know you added ones from the 2.6.39 kernel. I initially had difficulty getting my Atheros cards working after the update of wlanap of which you added the drivers. The ones I kept are not present in the kernel build already. I will be getting a Ubiquiti high powered USB a through n that I will test to see if the carl9170 and compat module work. Do you know of any problem having duplicate drivers in the wlanap folder? Otherwise there should be no issue at all since other than the cobalt patch and narrower hardware config for the system since it will never change on a given Cobalt, it's the same kernel version.

Oh, 2.0.1 uses a newer ssl and crypto so to use on my test boxes I had to plop the 0.9.8 libssl and libcrypto in to get the wlanap to work. It didn't care about the lack of symlinks.

I tell you what, the next update of your wlanap I won't remove any drivers at first and try it with just the kernel directory rename and arch.

[weizen_42]

Do you know of any problem having duplicate drivers in the wlanap folder?

Should be fine, depmod can be told to first look in wlanap folder for drivers.

I tell you what, the next update of your wlanap I won't remove any drivers at first and try it with just the kernel directory rename and arch.

Better get to it then, you've got something to do 

[Davesworld]

OK. I get this error when I leave the duplicate modules in the wlan_ap package:
root@raqcop:/tmp/wlanap-ipcop-3.2.0 # ./install
WLAN AP stop ...
Unloading ath5k...
Copying files
Add CGI
Install wireless kernel modules (this may take a few seconds) OK
Install wireless files OK
Creating log entry
Add to scheduler
Creating startup entry
WLAN AP stop ...
WLAN AP start ...
WARNING: Error inserting rfkill (/lib/modules/2.6.32-4-cobalt/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko.gz): Invalid module format       
WARNING: Error inserting cfg80211 (/lib/modules/2.6.32-4-cobalt/wlanap/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko.gz): Invalid module format 
WARNING: Error inserting crc32 (/lib/modules/2.6.32-4-cobalt/kernel/lib/crc32.ko.gz): Invalid module format                 
WARNING: Error inserting mac80211 (/lib/modules/2.6.32-4-cobalt/wlanap/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko.gz): Invalid module format 
WARNING: Error inserting ath (/lib/modules/2.6.32-4-cobalt/wlanap/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath.ko.gz): Invalid module format
FATAL: Error inserting ath5k (/lib/modules/2.6.32-4-cobalt/wlanap/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath5k/ath5k.ko.gz): Invalid module format                                                                                                                   
BLUE interface does not exist                                           

[weizen_42]

The compat wireless drivers are supposed to work with the standard kernel rfkill module (given kernel >= 2.6.31).  Guess that's not true for some reason.
Time to start digging.

[Davesworld]

I could have just as well left the whole driver package out. The AP works fine for at least the Ath5k drivers in the kernel. On one of my test boxes, I did take the added drivers folder out and depmod again.

The Ubiquiti SRC cardbus cards are awesome. 300mw and two mmcx connectors. Even with little whip antennas they put out better than my Cisco 1231 Bridge with two 9DB antennas on it.

My latest toy is a Ubiquiti usb SR71 which also has two mmcx connectors on it. This one goes A through N. I can get drivers to load and all but I'm not sure if the usb 1.1 is preventing it from actually working or not. When I go into setup and set it as blue, it doesn't stay. The easiest way I found to see if a blue interface is going to take is to go to the address settings immediately after choosing the blue device, if I do not see blue there, I know it didn't take. I got it to work on Windows 7 after finding drivers so at least the thing works. Of course with usb 1.1 it's not much point going beyond 802.11b.

My interest in the usb was because my daily edge firewall usually has the pci slot occupied by a dsl modem. I only use the ap to get internet access on portable devices such as cellphones while at home. May use it to stream audio to a wifi network player in my garage someday as well.

[bplaa.yai]

After some "almost successful" attempts with 1.4.x, it seems that my Raq 4i / PCI-PCMCIA bridge / ath AR5213 setup is now working great with raqcop 2.0.4
After installing raqcop 2.0.2 (not sure, maybe it was 2.0.1), everything worked fine out of the box with the corresponding wlanap addon. The 2.0.3 and 2.0.4 upgrades went smoothly too.

lspci :

Code:

(snip)
00:14.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212/AR5213 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

dmesg :

Code:

(snip)
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 0
pci 0000:02:00.0: reg 10 32bit mmio: [0x000000-0x00ffff]
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x100-0x3af: excluding 0x378-0x37f
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x3e0-0x4ff: excluding 0x408-0x40f 0x480-0x48f 0x4d0-0x4d7
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x820-0x8ff: clean.
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xc00-0xcf7: clean.
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xa00-0xaff: clean.
cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
ath5k 0000:02:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
ath5k 0000:02:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x0
ath: EEPROM indicates default country code should be used
ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x3a
ath: Country alpha2 being used: US
ath: Regpair used: 0x3a
cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
(start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
(2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
(2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
(2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
(5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
(5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel'
ath5k phy0: Atheros AR5213A chip found (MAC: 0x59, PHY: 0x43)
ath5k phy0: RF5112B multiband radio found (0x36)
cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US
udev[132]: renamed network interface wlan0 to wlan-1
cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: US
(start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
(2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm)
(5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 1700 mBm)
(5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
(5490000 KHz - 5600000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
(5650000 KHz - 5710000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
(5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 3000 mBm)

Just a success report here...

[Davesworld]

Looks good! It seems like the Ricoh chipped pcmcia bridges don't have any issue with the Cobalts. The Ti chipped ones work great on all the 3000 series but the 550 doesn't seem to like my old Ti chipped bridge. Of course the 550 has a full length PCI-X slot and is different overall.

Back when I bought the Ti chipped bridge 9 years ago, on most pc hardware it was the most compatible whereas the Ricoh chipped bridges did have more instances of conflicts. I ran into it myself. On Cobalt hardware the Ricoh's seem to work on all x86 Cobalts, go figure!