Tip: see GettingMadwifi in the MadWiFi wiki
Created Wednesday 25/7/2007
This HOW-TO covers wireless access point configuration and wireless client configuration under Fedora Core.
The TL-WN620G is a TP-Link usb devices that provides WiFi connectivity. This particular device uses the Atheros chipset (Atheros Communications, Inc), which is controlled using the device drivers installed by the Madwifi package. If running a vanilla Fedora installation, then use yum to install madwifi
MadWiFi is the Multiband Atheros Driver for Wireless Fidelity and is the package to use for controlling wifi devices based on the Atheros Chipset. Both Livna and RPMforge provide an rpm for madwifi, which can be installed with yum with:
bash # yum install madwifi
Tip: see GettingMadwifi in the MadWiFi wiki
Alternatively, if running Fedora Development or the yum repository version is not suitable for some reason, then download and install the svn stable trunk version or other pre-packaged release. Refer to GettingMadwifi section of the MadWiFi Wiki.
There are several evolutions of this particular driver package, with the hal implementation being the most recent. The hal version superceedes the pci version and is identified with the -ng postfix in the release name. The stable trunk version of the hal implementation is called called madwifi-trunk-current.tar.gz and is an automatically updated symlink that points to the most recent version. This unpacks to a directory with the build number and release date in the release name. For example madwifi-ng-r2594-20070719.
Building madwifi is pretty trivial. Download the relevant tarball (stable version or latest trunk version) and run the Makefile:
bash # wget
bash # tar zxvf
bash # make
bash # make install
Installing madwifi provides several driver modules, typically packaged in the net directory (with the trunk tarball version) and some binaries. The modules wlan.ko and hal and pci versions of the Atheros driver ath_hal.ko and ath_pci.ko respectively
Load the Atheros device driver ath_pci, which allows the Atheros device can be controlled. Loading ath_pci will also load the wlan, ath_pci and ath_hal devices.
bash # modprobe ath_pci
bash # lsmod | grep ath_pci ath_pci 120376 0 wlan 216320 1 ath_pci ath_hal 268160 1 ath_pci
Create the ath0 device, which is done automatically for madwifi release r1407 or later. If the device is not created, then create it with:
bash # wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta
Running iwconfig should report a device list similar to the following:
bash # iwconfig
eth0 no wireless extensions.
lo no wireless extensions.
wifi0 no wireless extensions.
ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.457 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:20 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/94 Signal level=-95 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
If the ath0 device is successfully created, then use ifconfig to bring ath0 into the active state:
bash # ifconfig ath0 up
Tip: See the FirstTimeHowTo of the MadWiFi wiki.
Stuart Moorfoot © 25 July 2007 foo@bund.com.au