802.11b and Red Hat 8.0
 

Has anyone managed to get any sort of 802.11b networking going smoothly on RH8.0? I have a Linksys WUSB11 (v.2.6), which uses the Atmel driver (http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net). I've compiled and installed the driver, and gotten the network up and running. I run into problems when I try to set it up to automatically connect on reboot. For some reason, iwconfig seems to have problems with a 128-bit WEP key. All the other settings seem to work fine (ESSID, rate, channel, mode,m etc.). I can use the utility that comes with the drivers, but that sort of takes the automatic out of it. I've tried hacking up the drivers a bit, but I just managed to crash the system. :P

I tried it on Mandrake 9.0, but I couldn't even get it up and running (which is a bit sad, 'cause I've been a fan of Mandrake since the 7.0 days...). I've had the most success with Red Hat 8.0 (and Blue Curve is just soooooo sweet). But dang it, I just want the bloody thing to start when I boot! Serves me right for getting a USB 802.11b dongle, eh?

Cheers,
JND

I feel like I'm talking to myself...

Problem semi-solved. I hard-coded some of my network information into the driver. It's inelegant, but since it's for my desktop machine it's not likely to change much. It looks like the driver defaults to a smaller WEP key if no encryption is specified, leaving the wireless tools hanging high and dry when it tries to set a big key. But it works on boot, so I'm happy! :)

Cheers,
JND

Don't use iwconfig for atmel cards - use their specified config files. I've got a WUSB11 2.6 myself, and found that that was my problem.

-Erwos

The "fastvnet.sh" file actually does calls to iwconfig to set up the device. I found that when I changed the default WEP key to 128-bit (instead of off), it (meaning the iwconfig calls) worked without a problem. And the "lvnet" program uses different ioctl calls than iwconfig (for whatever reason). I had no problem getting it to work with that, but I wanted something that would work on reboots (I have to switch between Red Hat and Win2k). It's working now, so I'm happy as a clam!

Cheers,
JND