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Posted: Sat 18 Dec 2010, 21:14
by Béèm
Your story is really confusing.
You said you had a FULL on a CF card.
Then the CF card is wiped.
Then you speak of multiple puppy's on CD.
Then you speak of 4.3.1.ISO
Then you speak of eth0
Then you speak of wlan0.
I think you haven't mentioned other things either.
Please start to specify what your installation/way of operating is now and maybe people understand and can give advice.
Posted: Sun 19 Dec 2010, 04:48
by AgentBlair
Béèm wrote:Your story is really confusing.
You said you had a FULL on a CF card.
Then the CF card is wiped.
Then you speak of multiple puppy's on CD.
Then you speak of 4.3.1.ISO
Then you speak of eth0
Then you speak of wlan0.
I think you haven't mentioned other things either.
Please start to specify what your installation/way of operating is now and maybe people understand and can give advice.
All is true, in order. I had a full install on CF of 431, then wiped it out after it acted all funny on me. Then I tried multiple versions of puppy to see if they work with my wireless card. None did. I reinstalled 4.3.1, somehow reverted to eth0, and older driver and that never worked, I then reinstalled puppy again which defaulted back to wlan0.
At the moment I am running on a live CD, with the original hard disk drive with the Windows XP contents on it so I can find the .INF and possibly use that with the Ndiswrapper. So far I cannot find the .INF file.
Posted: Sun 19 Dec 2010, 05:44
by tempestuous
Now you need to do some troubleshooting.
First, I recommend against this -
Puppy should have automatically loaded the hostap_cs (plus hostap) module at boot up, and any attempt to load it
again may corrupt the network interface.
1. Run the "dmesg" command, and see if there are any errors relating to how the hostap_cs driver loaded, particularly relating to firmware.
If so, please report.
2. If there are no errors from dmesg, disable all encryption at your wifi router, and see if you can connect under Puppy in this unencrypted state, using the Network Wizard. If this works, it proves the hostap_cs driver is working in a basic sense.
3. Run this command to query the version of onboard firmware contained in your WPC11 device -
Please report, especially the STAID (station firmware) version.
Posted: Sun 19 Dec 2010, 08:01
by AgentBlair
tempestuous wrote:Now you need to do some troubleshooting.
First, I recommend against this -
Puppy should have automatically loaded the hostap_cs (plus hostap) module at boot up, and any attempt to load it
again may corrupt the network interface.
1. Run the "dmesg" command, and see if there are any errors relating to how the hostap_cs driver loaded, particularly relating to firmware.
If so, please report.
2. If there are no errors from dmesg, disable all encryption at your wifi router, and see if you can connect under Puppy in this unencrypted state, using the Network Wizard. If this works, it proves the hostap_cs driver is working in a basic sense.
3. Run this command to query the version of onboard firmware contained in your WPC11 device -
Please report, especially the STAID (station firmware) version.
There were errors running puppy via live CD with a blank hard drive after I typed "dmesg". I'll post the whole log tomorrow.
Posted: Mon 20 Dec 2010, 00:29
by AgentBlair
Okay here it is including the hostap_diag wlan0 command.
I was also able to connect to an unencrypted network.
Posted: Mon 20 Dec 2010, 05:06
by tempestuous
AgentBlair wrote:Code: Select all
STAID: id=0x001f v1.3.5 (station firmware)
OK, there's your problem. Prism2.5/3 devices need to have station firmware 1.7.0 or higher, in order for WPA to work with the hostap family of Linux drivers. This is documented in the hostap/wpa_supplicant source code, from
http://hostap.epitest.fi/
The solution is to upgrade your wifi device's onboard (non-volatile) firmware.
This is possible while running Linux by using the "prism2_srec" utility in combination with the hostap_cs driver, but sadly this function of the driver is not enabled by default in Puppy kernels.
I can provide the suitably upgraded hostap_cs driver, but unfortunately I cannot provide it for Puppy 4.3 because I recently trashed my 4.3 development installation.
EDIT May 22 2011:
Prism2 firmware flashing instructions under Puppy 5.1/5.2 now available here
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 677#525677
Posted: Mon 20 Dec 2010, 05:13
by tempestuous
If the Linux firmware upgrade process I just described sounds too arduous, you could consider doing the firmware upgrade under Windows. Go to this site -
http://linux.junsun.net/intersil-prism/
and refer to the section "Window-based flashing steps".
Posted: Tue 21 Dec 2010, 00:49
by AgentBlair
I did the steps provided under windows (on a seperate HDD) and did successfully upgrade everything, however I am still unable to connect. I get the red alert message on the top of my screen. The ram on this laptop is at 128mb and perhaps this might be the issue.
Code: Select all
NICID: id=0801b v1.0.0 (PRISM III PCMIA (SST parallel flash))
PRIID: id=0x0015 v1.1.1
STAID: id=0x001f v1.8.2 (station firmware)
I get the error message: 'Output of wpa_cli -i wlan0 status'
Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory
And thank you for going out of your way to help me.
Posted: Tue 21 Dec 2010, 06:08
by tempestuous
You have made some progress.
AgentBlair wrote:I get the error message: 'Output of wpa_cli -i wlan0 status'
Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory
That's clearly an error message generated by the Network Wizard. I have never been comfortable with the WPA configuration commands used in the Network Wizard, so I suggest you run the manual wpa_supplicant commands we discussed earlier. If it fails, I suggest you then replace "-D hostap" with "-D wext" as an experiment.
On the subject of the "-D" parameter,
don't use Puppy 5.1! I just discovered its version of wpa_supplicant was not built with hostap support!
Posted: Tue 21 Dec 2010, 08:31
by AgentBlair
All right it works! I am finally connected to my network! : D
Edited wpa_supplicant2.conf
Code: Select all
ifconfig wlan0 up
rm /var/run/wpa_supplicant/*
wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -D wext -c /etc/network-wizard/wireless/wpa_profiles/wpa_supplicant2.conf -dd
-B
Then did Auto-DHCP.
Thanks guys again.
Posted: Tue 21 Dec 2010, 08:39
by tempestuous
That's great.
But just to check - it fails with "-D hostap"
but is successful with "-D wext"?
If this is the case, I can revise the Network Wizard accordingly.
Posted: Tue 21 Dec 2010, 19:00
by AgentBlair
tempestuous wrote:That's great.
But just to check - it fails with "-D hostap"
but is successful with "-D wext"?
If this is the case, I can revise the Network Wizard accordingly.
I can't 100% confirm it fails with -D hostap, but I can confirm with certainty that -D wext worked.
When I rebooted it seems my settings went away so I had to re-enter the commands, but the wpa_supplicant2.conf had what I edited it to be. It may have been a bad save, not exactly sure.
Posted: Wed 22 Dec 2010, 01:35
by Béèm
Glad you got it working, but one thing worries me.
You did specify having 128MB ram?
Then you need a swap file/partition so you have in total 512MB.
Posted: Wed 22 Dec 2010, 03:11
by AgentBlair
Béèm wrote:Glad you got it working, but one thing worries me.
You did specify having 128MB ram?
Then you need a swap file/partition so you have in total 512MB.
Okay, I picked half that, my mistake.
Posted: Wed 22 Dec 2010, 03:24
by rjbrewer
AgentBlair wrote:Béèm wrote:Glad you got it working, but one thing worries me.
You did specify having 128MB ram?
Then you need a swap file/partition so you have in total 512MB.
Okay, I picked half that, my mistake.
The swap partition is an "arbitrary" amount. Less or more may be needed depending on how many apps you are trying to run at once,
and what kind of install (full or frugal) you are using.
It takes 256mb of "real" ram to eject the live cd when it's booted.
Posted: Wed 22 Dec 2010, 05:09
by AgentBlair
I resized it to 512mb. Rebooted and it won't connect at all until I do it manually. Right now I have a full instal.
Posted: Wed 22 Dec 2010, 08:11
by tempestuous
AgentBlair wrote:... it won't connect at all until I do it manually.
Yes, that's to be expected, but it can be fixed ...
I just posted a WPA-configuration hotfix for Puppy 4.3 here
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 838#479838
Posted: Wed 22 Dec 2010, 21:04
by AgentBlair
I upgraded to 431, it seems I was using 430. Here are the commands that worked with 431:
Code: Select all
ifconfig wlan0 up
rm /var/run/wpa_supplicant/*
wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -D hostap -c /etc/network-wizard/wireless/wpa_profiles/wpa_supplicant2.conf -dd
-B
wext did not work, but hostap did.
I rebooted and was unable to automatically connect to the internet even after installing the package.
Posted: Wed 22 Dec 2010, 21:21
by rjbrewer
Sometimes you can right click 'connect' icon, and click 'autoconnect'
after losing the connection.
Posted: Wed 22 Dec 2010, 22:25
by AgentBlair
rjbrewer wrote:Sometimes you can right click 'connect' icon, and click 'autoconnect'
after losing the connection.
Doesn't work for me. I still have to do everything manually.
Ok nevermind it worked, it's just very slow I have to right click and do it a few times before it goes. Otherwise it won't work.