ubunyu and mad wifi

[mike havens]

was I the only one who got this/ IF SZO.... HERE IT IS FOR EVERYONE ELSE
-----
moin moin,

Mike says he meant to send this to the list.

ciao,

der.hans
--
#  http://www.LuftHans.com/Classes - - GNU/Linux Security class Jun 2nd
#  It's up to the reader to make the book interesting.
#  An author has only the opportunity to make it uninteresting. - der.hans

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 06:55:46 -0700
From: storkus at storkus.com
To: der.hans <PLUGd at LuftHans.com>
Subject: Re: Ubuntu and madwifi

Ah, if you were talking about me, I finally won the fight!  Since this
is
such a ridiculously common chipset in new laptops, I figured I should
comment.

First, you need to download the patch.  In addition to a kernel patch,
they have ready-made patches that can be compiled separate from the
main kernel tree so it doesn't "contaminate" it (or whatever), and
this is the path you choose.

To get both the source patch as well as these ready-made patches, goto:

http://madwifi.org/ticket/1679

Yes, it's a BIG ticket.  And, to make sure you don't miss it, the
driver will ONLY work on 32 bit x86--64 bit x86-64 will not work right
now.
If you want to do that, you need to go the ndiswrapper + winblows
drivers.
Personally, the idea of downloading binary blobs from 3rd party web
sites
that could potential carry a virus isn't very palatable for me.  Also,
since
all available tests show no real gain of 64 bit vs 32 bit, I'm sticking
with
32 bit and using the madwifi driver.

If you get the full tarball, all you have to do is make sure that
"mac80211" is in your kernel (built-in or module), untar, make, and make
install.  Really, that's it!  Now you know why I like this route!  And
it
seems to be reasonably kernel-independent, unlike (perhaps) the diff
against
the kernel itself.  The final step is to "modprobe ath_pci".  You should
then be able to run both i[f|w]config and see interface "ath0"; you may
have
to adjust your init scripts to look for this instead of, say, "wlan0"--I
did.

As for the performance, if you read the ticket, people have wildly
varying
reports.  However, they may have just compiled it wrong.  Personally, I
find
it works absolutely perfectly on our 802.11b LAN here; I suppose the
performance could vary a lot more in a faster network, but I don't have
one to test handy.  The only downside (on my Acer Aspire 5520) is that
I haven't been able to get the network indicator LED to work yet, but I
can
live with that.

Oh, one final thing: even though I did this with Slackware 12.0 (soon to
be
12.1 as soon as I d/l it), since this is a kernel module it should be
distro independent.

Mike

On Mon, 26 May 2008 10:56:13 -0700 (MST), "der.hans"
<PLUGd at LuftHans.com> said:
> moin moin,
>
> at the LoCo InstallFest there was a problem getting the madwifi drivers
> to
> compile and work. The question made it to the list as well.
>
> Today there is a kernel update for Ubuntu that might help.
>
>    * Madwifi 0.9.4 (LP: #208754):
>      - fixes compilation for recently released kernel 2.6.24
>
> Still need to get the kernel update before trying to use it.
>
> ciao,
>
> der.hans
> --
> #  http://www.LuftHans.com/        https://LOPSA.org/
> #  In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom.
> #  It is not always an easy sacrifice.

-- 
:-)~MIKE~(-: