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Which Linux distribution should I use?

N

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
I need to flash a new firmware onto my old prism PCI card and ubuntu is totally worthless. Besides not letting me flash the firmware it's giving me nothing but trouble.

Any suggestions for distros that will let me flash the firmware on my prism card without the hassle of ubuntu so that I can get this working and go to bed?
 
Ubuntu can be like that.

What is the problem your having? Can't compile the flash utility or something?
 
Originally posted by: drag
Ubuntu can be like that.

What is the problem your having? Can't compile the flash utility or something?
Click to expand...

The flash utility compiles just fine (after I fixed ubuntu's broken build system), it just errors out.

ddp@ddp-desktop:~/bin$ sudo ./hostap_diag wlan0
Host AP driver diagnostics information for 'wlan0'

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_HOSTAPD]: Function not implemented
Could not communicate with the kernel driver.
ddp@ddp-desktop:~/bin$ ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:145 Memory:e0852000-e0853000

ddp@ddp-desktop:~/bin$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

wlan0 no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.
Click to expand...

The one thread I found about this points to certain things not being enabled in the driver.
 
The one thread I found about this points to certain things not being enabled in the driver.
Click to expand...

My first guess would be that it's probably one of these two kernel config options:

HOSTAP_FIRMWARE_NVRAM
HOSTAP_FIRMWARE

But I just looked at an i386 Edgy VM I have and both of them seem to be enabled in the stock 2.6.17-10-generic kernel And hostap_diag is already in the hostap-utils package so why did you compile it yourself?
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
The one thread I found about this points to certain things not being enabled in the driver.
Click to expand...

My first guess would be that it's probably one of these two kernel config options:

HOSTAP_FIRMWARE_NVRAM
HOSTAP_FIRMWARE

But I just looked at an i386 Edgy VM I have and both of them seem to be enabled in the stock 2.6.17-10-generic kernel And hostap_diag is already in the hostap-utils package so why did you compile it yourself?
Click to expand...

Because apt-get install hostapd didn't work. Figured they didn't have a package for any of it.
 
ddp@ddp-desktop:~/bin$ sudo apt-get install hostap-utils
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package hostap-utils
Click to expand...
 
Because apt-get install hostapd didn't work. Figured they didn't have a package for any of it.
Click to expand...

Guess you should get back to reading the docs then =)

hostapd isn't in 'main', it's part of universe according to packages.ubuntu.com. Startup Synaptic, click Settings->Repositories and then enable the rest.

apt-cache search <blah> and apt-file (not installed by default) search <blah> are you friends. The latter needs to be updated manually but apt-cache gets updated whenever you do a normal apt-get update.
 
Found this gem:
"UPDATE2: Finally, linxu-wlan-ng 0.2.5-2ubuntu1 is in Edgy. Please install the official version. Only firmware loading is broken."
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1604462

You'd think they would mention it in the documentation somewere (/usr/share/doc/<packagename>)



Then I found this:
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/p...-wlan-ng_0.2.6+svn20061108-2/changelog
[/quote] * removed udev rules by ubuntu, they make firmware loading fail putting the
interface 'active' too early.[/quote]

I wouldn't be suprised if you couldn't go and grab the linux-wlan-ng-source and linux-wlan-ng packages from Debian Unstable and install them then use module-assistant to build the kernel modules package and install that for you.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Because apt-get install hostapd didn't work. Figured they didn't have a package for any of it.
Click to expand...

Guess you should get back to reading the docs then =)

hostapd isn't in 'main', it's part of universe according to packages.ubuntu.com. Startup Synaptic, click Settings->Repositories and then enable the rest.

apt-cache search <blah> and apt-file (not installed by default) search <blah> are you friends. The latter needs to be updated manually but apt-cache gets updated whenever you do a normal apt-get update.
Click to expand...

I tried an apt-cache search on it, it didn't come up. Because it isn't in the main repo, which means there isn't an official package for it. Which means I wouldn't find it if I didn't spend a lot of time reading up on an "emergency" installation.

This wouldn't have had to happen if the live cd's compile tools weren't broken.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Which means I wouldn't find it if I didn't spend a lot of time reading up on an "emergency" installation.
Click to expand...

packages.ubuntu.com...
Click to expand...

And I was supposed to know about that site how? My point is, put it in or out, not this in between bullshit.
 
oops.

I didn't realise that hostapd was it's own drivers for prismii and wlan-ng was completely different stuff. That's weird that it has like 3 or 4 different drivers for the same card...
 
Originally posted by: drag
oops.

I didn't realise that hostapd was it's own drivers for prismii and wlan-ng was completely different stuff. That's weird that it has like 3 or 4 different drivers for the same card...
Click to expand...

From the note in the hostap driver tarball, it sounds like their driver got merged into the kernel.
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Which means I wouldn't find it if I didn't spend a lot of time reading up on an "emergency" installation.
Click to expand...

packages.ubuntu.com...
Click to expand...

And I was supposed to know about that site how? My point is, put it in or out, not this in between bullshit.
Click to expand...

Because your suppose to have been a long time Debian user before switching to Ubuntu, just like all the developers that work on Ubuntu.

On Debian's homepage there is a link to their online package.debian.com website for searching for packages. Since you'd be a long time debian user it would make sense to just put in 'packages.ubuntu.com' naturally so there is little point in actually documenting that anywere or putting a link into the defualt browser or anything like that.

duh. 😛
 
And I was supposed to know about that site how? My point is, put it in or out, not this in between bullshit.
Click to expand...

It's still better than the crap that Fedora does, they ship just the basic system and then you have to go looking for 3rd party repos for anything the Fedora people don't want to maintain. At least with Ubuntu they touchup and rebuild all of Debian even though they only officially support a small portion of it.

Why aren't you doing this in OpenBSD anyway? Doesn't it have any facilities for flashing your card?
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
It's still better than the crap that Fedora does, they ship just the basic system and then you have to go looking for 3rd party repos for anything the Fedora people don't want to maintain. At least with Ubuntu they touchup and rebuild all of Debian even though they only officially support a small portion of it.
Click to expand...

Fedora's repos generally suck.

Why aren't you doing this in OpenBSD anyway? Doesn't it have any facilities for flashing your card?
Click to expand...

Not that I could find. This is one of the areas Linux is more advanced. 🙂

I unloaded the drivers and reloaded them and hostap_diag seems to be working.

Time to brick the card. 😀

Thanks for the help. 🙂
 
Because your suppose to have been a long time Debian user before switching to Ubuntu, just like all the developers that work on Ubuntu.
Click to expand...

Gentoo has a similar page at packages.gentoo.org so that kills that theory. It's actually quite disappointing that other distros don't have similar databases.

From the note in the hostap driver tarball, it sounds like their driver got merged into the kernel.
Click to expand...

Did you check your kernel config for the two options I mentioned above? Chances are they're already enabled since they were for me, but it wouldn't hurt to check. The config should be in /boot/config-`uname -r`.
 
Oops, guess it didn't work after all. The diag worked, but the srec is complaining about the driver.
root@ddp-desktop:~/prism# prism2_srec -f wlan1 pk010101.hex
srec summary for pk010101.hex
Component: 0x0015 1.1.1 (primary firmware)

Could not read wlan PDA. This requires PRISM2_DOWNLOAD_SUPPORT definition in
driver/module/hostap_config.h.
Click to expand...
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Because your suppose to have been a long time Debian user before switching to Ubuntu, just like all the developers that work on Ubuntu.
Click to expand...

Gentoo has a similar page at packages.gentoo.org so that kills that theory. It's actually quite disappointing that other distros don't have similar databases.
Click to expand...

I had no idea. The only way I know that packages.debian.org ever existed is becuase they have link to it from their homepage. 🙂

 
Well, that kernel compile failed. Something about not being able to sync vfs and root being on an unknown block.
Click to expand...

I assume you're trying to compile a custom kernel now? If you used the Ubuntu config as a base they enable everything possible as a module so you need an initramfs to boot. You _should_ just have to do 'update-initramfs -c -k <version>' to create the image and 'update-initramfs -u -k <version>' to update it if you recompile again.

Also don't forget to run 'update-grub' so that the initrd line gets added for that kernel.
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Well, that kernel compile failed. Something about not being able to sync vfs and root being on an unknown block.
Click to expand...

How did you go about compiling it?

Did you copy the config, change the needed definition, and use the Debian kernel building system? It works flawlessly for me every time.

The guide here is good, but you'll need to skip the first few steps since you don't want a newer kernel, you just want to modify the current one. http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=311158

I would first make sure you have your kernel headers:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Then follow step 1 in the guide, modify the kernel source as you need, and then carry on from step 6.
 
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