Hi can I please get some assistance with installing an acx100 driver to
enable my dwl-650+ pc card to work with Mandrake 9.1
I am having serious problems with one particular spot regarding creating a
subdirectory in the installation directory (I am new to linux and NOT sure
what it means by installation directory). Having problems with the
paragraph with the "**********" around it.
Thanks in advance!
Has anybody done this before?
The instructions are as follows:
Background:
-----------
There are currently various 802.11b+ cards on the market which provide
enhanced
802.11b performance of 22Mbs. All of the well known cards are based on the
Texas
Instruments acx100 chipset, (e.g. D-Link DWL-650+, USR, Pheenet),
unfortunately
thus far the manufactures of these cards have not released public Linux
drivers
and TI has not released technical specs to enable the development of open
source
drivers. However, a set of binary drivers compiled against a small selection
of
Linux kernels is currently available (see the Links section), the intention
of
this document is to explain briefly how to get them installed on different
Linux
distributions and what tweaks are needed to get them running.
This is by no means a replacement for the development of open source drivers
which are well under way (see
http://acx100.sourceforge.net) but hopefully
will
provide a temporary solution to those people who want to try to get these
cards
working.
Also, I hope that with more people using these drivers at an early stage,
there
will be feedback generated of potential problems, pitfalls and workarounds
which
may well be beneficial to the open source driver development.
Introduction:
-------------
This document is intended to explain the steps necessary to get the binary
releases of the acx100 drivers up and running on distributions other than
those
directly listed in the binary driver package.
The following table shows the available binary modules in the current binary
driver package (acx100_bin_20030503.tgz), the linux distribution they were
built
with and the version of GCC that was used to compile them.
Module Distro GCC
------------------------------------------
2.4.18-14 RedHat 8.0 3.2
2.4.18-6mdk Mandrake 8.2 2.96
2.4.18-6mdk3 Mandrake 8.2 3.0.4
2.4.18-686 Debian 2.95.4
2.4.19-16mdk Mandrake 9.0 3.0.4
2.4.20-8 RedHat 9.0 3.2.2
2.4.21-0.13mdk Mandrake 9.1 3.2.2
Installation
------------
Make sure you have a recent enough version of wireless tools installed, the
binary drivers are built with wireless tools version 15.
Obtain and extract the binary driver package:
"tar -xvzf acx100_bin_20030503.tgz"
If you happen to be running a stock distribution that matches one of the
supplied binaries, then you should be able to simply run the installation
script
"InstallAcx100" and skip straight to the Configuration section, lucky you.
Relabelling the module
----------------------
If your distribution doesn't match, or you are using a custom Linux system
then
all is not lost, as long as your kernel is compatible with one of the
binaries
you should be o.k.
The first step is to determine what you are running if you don't already
know.
The kernel version can be obtained using "uname -r", you should also know
what
version of gcc your kernel was compiled with. If you are using a
distribution
and didn't compile it yourself then "gcc -v" will display the version of the
gcc
compiler you have installed, which should match the compiler used to build
the
kernel.
# TODO Perhaps add a list of popular distributions and their GCC versions?
The table above shows the names of the modules which match the kernel
versions,
and the version of gcc that they are built with. You need to choose a module
that matches your kernel version and gcc version. Tip: If you are using a
'stock' 2.4.21 or 2.4.19 kernel, then you will probably find that the 2.4.20
and
2.4.18 kernels respectively are a closer match than the Mandrake kernels of
the
same version number.
**************I REALLY HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THIS PARAGRAPH (I dont know
what it means by the installation directory... :
Next create a subdirectory in the installation directory that matches your
"uname -r" value and make a copy of the driver for your chosen kernel. The
kernel file should be renamed "acx100sta-"uname -r".o. (Clearly you don't
'need' to make a copy of the file in a subdirectory named as such if you
install the module by hand, but it might be handy to keep the installation
all
together)
Then enter the new directory and relabel the kernel info on this file with
the
following commands: echo -ne "kernel_version="`uname -r`"\0" > version
objcopy --remove-section=.modinfo --add-section=.modinfo=version
acx100sta-*.o
Try to install using the install script to see if this works for you. If so,
just skip to the configuration section.************************
If the module fails to initialise then you'll most likely have unresolved
symbols problems. To see a list of the failed symbols, type: depmod -ae
If the dependency problem is with version information on symbol names you
will
see a series of unresolved symbols ending in "_R" followed by a hex number
e.g. "__ioremap_R9eac042a".
If the missing symbols are due to mismatches between symbol name suffixes,
then
running the "fixscript" script on the module may solve the problem. Then try
installing again.
If there are still missing symbols but they appear to be just for debugging
/
logging, you may be able to get away with writing a small C app that creates
a
small stub function and then using "ld -r" to link the object file into the
module.
Configuration
-------------
If the module loads without problems, (you will get a warning that loading
the
module taints your kernel, its safe to ignore this warning) and the card
springs
into life then you're ready for the next step....
Firstly add to /etc/modules.conf
alias eth1 acx100sta
Either write a start script to initialise your card, or modify your
distributions scripts to work around some of the problems with the binary
driver. It appears that it is necessary to repeat the iwconfig commands for
the
card to associate correctly with an AP with a short delay in between.
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