Success with Gigafast WE 741-UI, config on Debian, and some observations

Hi!

Finally I've found some time to try and make my USB adapter work with my
linux box. And I did get it working! Here's some information on how I got it
working and which details cost me a lot of time to work out. 

This is my system:
- Shuttle SS40
- Debian (originally Woody, now with many unstable packages and a
self-compiled 2.4.25-pre7 kernel)
- Gigafast WE 741-UI adapter

First I tried it with the Berlios drivers including the current cvs version
and had no success at all. Most of the time already the download of the
firmware failed (just like I described it in an earlier post to this list, months
ago).

So I decided to try the 20021209 snapshot of the atmelwlandriver from
sourceforge. This is the last version of the sourceforge driver that supports the
intersil radio in my adapter. And it worked - at least sometimes. Usually I
had to set the wep key several times until it was accepted by the adapter.
Sometimes dhcp worked, sometimes not. And quite often the driver crashed and I
had to reboot the whole system. 

At some time a took a look at the motherboard manual and I found that there
were two possibilities for accessing the usb ports in my Shuttle SS40
computer: Either via the MuTIOL south bridge or via the PCI bus. The MuTIOL is
faster. And for some reason (probably because older linux kernels had some
problems with the MuTIOL) I had told the bios to use the slow PCI access.

After changing my bios setting for the usb ports to MuTIOL, everything
worked better. But I was still not satisfied with the sourceforge driver. It was
still not stable.

Then I tried the berlios driver again (current cvs, version v0.12beta7). All
the problems with the firmware download were gone. After some more
configuration, now everything works great and stable and is set up to be initialized
automatically when my system boots.
 
However, during installation of the berlios driver I made the following
observations:
- During configuration with iwconfig, the sourceforge driver and the berlios
driver behave differently. The sourceforge driver already shows the MAC of
the used access point in the iwconfig output, when the right channel and essid
are set. The berlios driver seems to start looking for the access point only
when the interface is activated with ifconfig.
- When I activate debugging with iwpriv wlan0 set_debug 0x180003 (or
0x100003), there seem to be some problems. Most of the time, the connection just
times out (see the log below, at the end of this mail) and the connection to the
access point is lost forever. Then I tried it without the debug mode - and
now I don't have these problems anymore.

Then I wanted my system to configure the wlan connection automatically when
my machine boots. Since I have a Debian system, I found the necessary
information in:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-gateway.en.html
especially chapter 10.6.3: Configuring a Wi-Fi interface

This is what I added to /etc/network/interfaces:
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wireless-channel MyChannelNumber
        wireless-essid MyESSID
        wireless-nick MyNick
        wireless-key s:MyWepKeyStrng restricted
        wireless-mode managed

Of course I also had to add the wlan0 interface to the dhcpcd configuration
in /etc/dhcpc/config

Yours,
Birger

### snip ###
This is what my syslog says, when I debugging is enabled in the driver:

Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 param: ssid MyESSID
(64656661756C74) mode infra ch 6 wep enabled key 1 keylen 13
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 param: preamble long rts
1536 frag 1536 txrate auto excl 1
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 param: pm_mode 1 pm_period
0 auth_mode open scan_times 10 120 scan_mode active
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 0 -> 1 (SCANNING)
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: ignored AuthFrame in state
1
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: 0xcb47ab40: bssid
00:90:xx:xx:xx:xx channel 6 ssid MyESSID (64656661756C74) capa x0011 rates 82 84 8B 96 rssi
18 link 7 noise 0
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: 0xcb47ab40: bssid
00:90:xx:xx:xx:xx channel 6 ssid MyESSID (64656661756C74) capa x0011 rates 82 84 8B 96 rssi
18 link 2 noise 0
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 1 -> 6 (JOINING)
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 find_matching_bss: returned
cb47ab40
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 join addr 00:90:xx:xx:xx:xx
ssid MyESSID type 2 ch 6 timeout 2000
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 6 -> 2
(AUTHENTICATING)
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 2 -> 3 (ASSOCIATING)
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 3 -> 7 (CONNECTED)
Mar  2 23:07:08 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: connected to BSSID
00:90:xx:xx:xx:xx
Mar  2 23:07:21 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: timeout, state 7
Mar  2 23:07:21 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: lost beacon bssid
00:90:xx:xx:xx:xx
Mar  2 23:07:21 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 7 -> 1 (SCANNING)
Mar  2 23:07:21 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:21 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:21 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 1 -> 6 (JOINING)
Mar  2 23:07:21 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 find_matching_bss: returned
00000000
Mar  2 23:07:21 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 6 -> 1 (SCANNING)
Mar  2 23:07:32 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:32 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:32 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 1 -> 6 (JOINING)
Mar  2 23:07:32 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 find_matching_bss: returned
00000000
Mar  2 23:07:32 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 6 -> 1 (SCANNING)
Mar  2 23:07:42 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:42 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:42 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 1 -> 6 (JOINING)
Mar  2 23:07:42 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 find_matching_bss: returned
00000000
Mar  2 23:07:42 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 6 -> 1 (SCANNING)
Mar  2 23:07:52 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:53 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 BSS table (curr=00000000,
new=00000000):
Mar  2 23:07:53 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 1 -> 6 (JOINING)
Mar  2 23:07:53 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0 find_matching_bss: returned
00000000
Mar  2 23:07:53 cosimo kernel: at76c503.c: wlan0: state 6 -> 1 (SCANNING)


-- 
+++ NEU bei GMX und erstmalig in Deutschland: TÜV-geprüfter Virenschutz +++
100% Virenerkennung nach Wildlist. Infos: http://www.gmx.net/virenschutz