On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 07:25:56PM +1000, James Rayner wrote:

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 7:22 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:

...

Listmates,

       My second Arch box is now complete (well almost:-) This time a desktop box with a zytel wireless lan adapter using the TI acx chipset and its firmware 2 is the acx111_2.3.1.31/tiacx111c16 firmware slice. The card is detected and works fine it think... I can open kwifimanager and it has my access point associated and I can watch the generic packets blip by and watch the strength meter do its thing, but I cannot authenticate :-(

       My system is WPA, and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find anything in Arch that would all me to configure the wireless as anything other than WEP. Bummer. Wep isn't allowed within 500 feet of anything I deal with. After spending a little time playing with aircrack, if you haven't already, you will definitely feel the same. Most wep secured wireless networkss can be cracked in less than 30 seconds. (why do you think I'm never without a wireless connection -- no matter where I go;-)

       So what tools are available to configure this acx111 card to use WPA-TKIP or WPA2? In that other Linux OS, the knetworkmanager utility did a great job with the Atheros bashed card in my laptop, XP has no problems with the card (this box is dual boot) so I know the hardware works fine. Any suggestions?

netcfg, it's in core and is recommended on the Wireless Setup page... http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netcfg

My preference is wpa_auto: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=21491

David Rosenstrauch wrote:

James Rayner wrote:

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On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 7:22 PM, David C. Rankin

netcfg, it's in core and is recommended on the Wireless Setup page... http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netcfg

(Also from David Heistand) My preference is wpa_auto: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=21491

And for a GUI solution, Networkmanager/knetworkmanager should also work fine with WPA.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Networkmanager

DR

James, Dave & David, Thank you. I have installed knetworkmanager and I'm looking at netcfg. Thanks to Thomas as well. I hope Thomas isn't correct on the issue being a driver limitation, I was never fond of ndiswrapper solutions. All of this is on a desktop, not much larger than a shoebox (dell optiplex-SFF -- small form factor) that I was going to stick under my coffee table quick access. If a native solution can't be found, then I know the windows driver will work and support WPA2 because the wireless is working fine there. I'll keep picking around and report back. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

Thomas Bächler wrote:

David C. Rankin schrieb:

...

Listmates,

My second Arch box is now complete (well almost:-) This time a desktop box with a zytel wireless lan adapter using the TI acx chipset and its firmware 2 is the acx111_2.3.1.31/tiacx111c16 firmware slice. The card is detected and works fine it think... I can open kwifimanager and it has my access point associated and I can watch the generic packets blip by and watch the strength meter do its thing, but I cannot authenticate :-(

Short answer: Throw that thing away!

Long answer: There is an opensource driver (tiacx, I think that is the one from the repos) that was reverse-engineered, but IIRC has no support for anything but WEP or Open. According to some linux wireless guys (sorry, I don't have a source here, I only recall this from memory) this driver was not created by proper clean-room techniques, so they cannot reuse the code.

There is another driver called tiacx-mac80211 that should support WPA and such, but is apparently very broken/unfinished and was created from the tiacx source, so the above applies again.

The only chance of getting reliable WPA with the tiacx chipset is probably ndiswrapper.

UUgh! No wonder the wireless cards were being excessed for $14. You hit the nail on the head Thomas: [16:02 supersff:/home/david] # wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -dd Initializing interface 'wlan0' conf '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf' driver 'wext' ctrl_interface 'N/A' bridge 'N/A' Configuration file '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf' -> '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf' Reading configuration file '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf' ctrl_interface='DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel' eapol_version=1 ap_scan=1 fast_reauth=1 Line: 6 - start of a new network block <snip> WEXT: Operstate: linkmode=1, operstate=5 Own MAC address: 00:13:49:54:2b:c9 wpa_driver_wext_set_wpa Driver does not support WPA. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ** I updated the wiki to reflect this fact. Well, since it works flawlessly under XP and I have the install CD, looks like I'll have to put my dislike of using the windows driver aside and run ndiswrapper :-( -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

Yeah, sorry to hear. I guess you should think about getting a different cheap wireless card and check if it is supported first. I find that a lot are these days. Anyway, netcfg: I was a bit skeptical about this whole idea of non-automatic wireless via command line and specifically configuration files, but I must say, it's pretty nice overall. There are occasionally a couple glitches here and there (like just now, it didn't notice that my connection dropped and the profile stayed on. Solved by just turning it off/on manually.), but in the whole, this is the most solid, most automatic network system I've used. Setting up profiles, it turns out, is pretty much as simple as typing in your network information into your normal network manager. netcfg is also conveniently tied into rc.conf, so you can just dump your common networks in there in order of preference and you're done. I love this -- networkmanager still frequently connects to the neighbours' wireless rather than my own. Also, just as something to get you started maybe, attached is a small script that scans for networks in the area and returns you their names + encryption status. This script could certainly use some improvement, but maybe you'll find some use for it if you decide to go the netcfg way eventually. Cheers, -AT On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 8:53 PM, David C. Rankin wrote:

Thomas Bächler wrote:

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David C. Rankin schrieb:

...

Listmates,

    My second Arch box is now complete (well almost:-) This time a desktop box with a zytel wireless lan adapter using the TI acx chipset and its firmware 2 is the acx111_2.3.1.31/tiacx111c16 firmware slice. The card is detected and works fine it think... I can open kwifimanager and it has my access point associated and I can watch the generic packets blip by and watch the strength meter do its thing, but I cannot authenticate :-(

Short answer: Throw that thing away!

Thomas, all,

       I think I may be dead in the water with this card using WPA under Linux. The problem is that there isn't a *single* windows driver that provides WPA capabilities for the card. Specifically, in order to provide wpa access, this wireless card relies on the following files for basic wireless with WEP:

FwRad16.bin FwRad17.bin FwRad19.bin TNET1130.INF TNET1130.sys

       And then requires the following for WPA access:

odysseyIM3.inf odysseyIM3.sys

       The odyssey driver is a separate add-on driver that windows uses as a "wrapper" for the tnet1130 driver to provide added WPA capabilities.

       ndiswrapper will load the tnet1130 driver without complaint, and the ndiswrapper -l show the driver properly installed. The odyssey driver will load, but ndiswrapper -l shows the driver is "not a valid driver". Further, even though the tnet1130 driver loads, the essid cannot be manipulated with iwconfig, so I'm doubtful that even the basic wireless will work under ndiswrapper.

       Unless somebody has a stroke of genius and can let me know "hey, Rankin, you are going about this all wrong!" I think the case is pretty much closed on this one...

-- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com

David Rosenstrauch schrieb:

That's actually good Linux hardware advice more generally as well: try to buy hardware from open-source friendly vendors. Intel in particular seems to be very compatible with open source, so that's always a good bet when it comes to network cards.

Atheros has even better Open Source support than Intel, Intel only supports "standard" features (station, IBSS and monitor mode), while Atheros has full support (including Access Point and mesh modes).