Lauri's blog

Siin siis väike kokkuvõte situatsioonist võrgukaartidega Ubuntu all. Ehk säästab kellelegi aega! Selleks et kontrollida mis võrgukaart sul arvutis on, sisesta terminalis:

lspci | grep -i net

Tulemuseks on midagi sellist:

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)

Broadcom

Kui tegu on Broadcom kaardiga, on situatsioon üsna paha. Broadcom pole avaldanud eriti palju dokumentatsiooni oma kaartide kohta mistõttu draiverite kvaliteet jätab soovida. Ubuntu 10.04 sees on b43 moodul mis on reverse-engineeritud Linksys ruuteri tüürelite baasil. Kuigi tüürel on olemas, siis sellest siiski ei piisa, vajalik on ka firmware mis võrgukaardis endas jookseb. Debiani pakett mis kõik raske töö ära teeb on olemas siin. Selle paketiga olen ma käima saanud võrgukaardid järgnevate kiibistikega: BCM4311, BCM4312. Varem on b43 tüürel põhjustanud arvuti kokkujoosmisi olles ühendatud krüpteeritud võrku, kuid praegu peaks situatsioon olema paranenud. Kui on probleeme siis võib mulle kirjutada-joonistada!

Intel

Intelil on oma open-source osakond kes Linuxi tüürelitega tegeleb seega Inteli võrgukaartidega eriti probleeme ei tohiks tekkida. Paraku võrgukaartide firmware on kinnise lähtekoodiga, samas Intel lubab neid binaare levitada. Ubuntus on Inteli võrgukaartide firmware juba kaasas.

Atheros

Atherose võrgukaardid on popid netbookides. Minu teada on nende võrgukaartide moodulid (ath3k, ath5k, ath9k) ja ka firmware avatud lähtekoodiga. Atheros ise tüürelite arendust vist palju ei toeta kuid on avaldanud piisavalt dokumentatsiooni, et Vaba Tarkvara kogukonnal oleks võimalik tüüreleid ise arendada. Probleemide esinemisel tasub paigaldada wireless backports pakett:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic

Ralink

Ralink on üks vähestest firmadest kes paneb rõhku avatud lähtekoodiga moodulitele (rt2500, rt73). Ralink võrgukaartide tugi on üldiselt väga hea. Probleemide korral kehtib sama soovitus mis Atheros puhulgi – paigaldada wireless backports pakett.

This is a follow-up to my previous post about a USB wireless dongle I had acquired some weeks ago.

As I said this device shows up as:

Bus 002 Device 008: ID 148f:2573 Ralink Technology, Corp. 
    RT2501USB Wireless Adapter

There seems to be some ambiquity about the vendorid/productid because this matches multiple chipsets. Usually it is pointing to rt73 chipset but be warned!

Firstly I installed Gentoo in VirtualBox since I didn’t want to mess with my Estobuntu install. The rt2x00 guys have landed in Linux Git repository and they have a branch there with most up-to-date drivers. Note that this pulls over 100MB of changsets!

cd /usr/src
git clone 
    git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ivd/rt2x00.git 
    linux-rt2x00
ln -s linux-rt2x00 linux
cd linux
make menuconfig # Enable rt2x00 modules under networking device drivers
make -j4
make modules_install
make install
nano /boot/grub/grub.conf

Next I installed hostapd. Note that “iwconfig wlan0 mode master” DOES NOT work anymore. Instead hostapd is used which is relies on new mac80211 framework in kernel to set wireless card settings. Gentoo had hostapd version 0.6.9 in portage which failed with this card, I installed manually 0.7.2:

wget http://hostap.epitest.fi/releases/hostapd-0.7.2.tar.gz
tar xvzf hostapd-0.7.2.tar.gz
cd hostapd
cp defconfig .config
nano .config # Enable CONFIG_DRIVER_NL80211 there
make
make install

Afterward I created hostapd.conf with content like this:

interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=test
channel=1

Note that before starting hostapd I needed firmware for this card. Firmware wasn’t shipped within the Git branch. I had to copy it from my Estobuntu install. The file in question is /lib/firmware/rt73.bin, I placed it in the same place in my virtual machine:

hostapd -dd /path/to/hostapd.conf

The AP should be visible now. Next step is to set IP for the card:

ifconfig wlan0 192.168.100

Finally I had to configure DHCP server in /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf and restart DHCP server.

Few days ago I finally received G-Sky 500mW USB wireless adapter I ordered from eBay for 15USD. The package also included 5dBi antenna with R-SMA connector.

The same product seems to be available with various chipsets, so you need to ask for specific one while ordering in eBay. In this case I asked for Ralink chipset because of their rather good support for Linux. This item works out-of-the-box with Ubuntu 9.10.

In lsusb the device shows up as Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2501USB Wireless Adapter (148f:2573). This chip supports 802.11b (11Mbps) and 802.11g (54Mbps). Most commonly used wireless encryption methods are supported: WEP, WPA, WPA2.

The funny thing is that the package also included BackTrack4 LiveCD and instructions for cracking wireless networks!