by Gregor N. Purdy
2001-03-13
UPDATE 2001-07-26
"Omar" in email today indicates:
... the info on the DWL 650 wireless card regarding linux may need to be updated. It seems that the newest incarnation of the DWL 650 cards (the newer firmware if flashed to older DWL 650 cards will do the same thing) aren't recognized by the 1.06 version of the wavelan driver that ships with Redhat 7.1 etc...i
I haven't run into this, so I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who has run into this. Also, if anyone has a solution, I'd like to post it.
My most recent experience was working with RedHat 7.1, which worked almost without a hitch. The interface name became 'eth0' instead of 'wvlan0', though, which was a little confusing.
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You can see the MobiliX Unofficially Supported PCMCIA Cardslist for information on many cards. The information for the D-Link DWL-650 Wireless LAN Adaptor is here. Note that the DWL-650 is a rebadged WaveLAN card.
David Hinds helped me get the card working on my machine, and then I posted an announcement about it on the comp.os.linux.network newsgroup.
The instructions are really pretty simple, although I wouldn't have been able to do it without help (that's why I'm making this information available). Here's what it says at the MobiliX site:
Add some information to /etc/pcmcia/conf:
card "D-Link DWL-650"
manfid 0x0156, 0x0002
bind "wvlan_cs"
(In my file, this is around line 280, between the entries for
"D-Link DE-650" and "DynaLink L10C Ethernet".)
Run 'netconf' (the network configuration part of linuxconf) and under Basic Host information add an adaptor left otherwise blank but with 'wvlan0' filled in as the interface name.
This procedure worked for my on a RedHat 7.0 system.
Here are some of the questions I've answered via email
Q: Have you by any chance gotten your DWL-650 to work correctly in linux? If so, was it through the DWL-500 package with the included PCI->PCMCIA board?
A: I don't have the DWL-500 here in the lab, so I don't know how to make it work, but as I understand it the 500 is just the 650 bundled with a PCI card that has a PCMCIA slot in it. So, if you are lucky enough to have Linux automatically recognize the PCI-PCMCIA adaptor, then maybe you'll only have to follow the same set of directions as with the 650 to get the wireless card recognized once it is inserted in the PCMICIA slot.
I have heard someone else had success with one under Linux, but I don't know the details.
I'd be curious to hear back how it works for you...
A: I found the driver was already installed on my RedHat 7 system as part of the distribution. All that was required was to add some information to the PCMCIA subsystem so it could identify the card and associate the driver with it. Then, I just created a new network interface using the linuxconf program and it worked. I'm not sure what would be involved for someone that didn't already have the drivers installed (I don't know where those drivers live on the Internet). One place to start looking for information and/or drivers would be the PCMCIA project on SourceForge. There are some drivers included there as well as other software needed to make Linux do PCMCIA. Perhaps the latest version already has the card identification information in it, since David Hinds (the lead developer) is the one who helped me work it out...
Q: I've tried the instructions you posted to comp.os.linux.network on getting the DWL-650 card to work and I've had luck getting the card to work, but after 5-10 minutes my laptop locks up and I have to reset it. I'm using version 2.2.17 of the kernel and 3.1.24 of the pcmcia-cs and 7.2 of Mandrake. Is there something I missed?
A: I haven't run into that problem. I'm using RedHat 7.0 (2.2.16-22 kernel). On my machine, running 'rpm -q -a | grep pcmcia' returns "kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.16-22". Strangely enough /usr/src/linux contains a directory named 'pcmcia-cs-3.1.19'.
A: Yes.
I have one. I pulled it out of the box, set it on the shelf next to my hub, plugged it into power and plugged it into the hub. It worked out of the box. There is a configuration program that comes with it that runs under windows, and you can use it to prevent random folks from connecting to your wireless network).
It uses DHCP to get an IP address. So, I set up an entry in my /etc/dhcpd.conf file (on my DHCP server, which is wired to the network) to give it a specific address.
I added a third network adaptor to my gateway/firewall and plugged the DWL-1000AP into it. I'm running DHCP on that computer for a separate subnet and I have ipchains rules that allow anyone on that subnet to get from it to the Internet, but only certain computers to get back and forth between the wireless subnet and my internal wired LAN.
I have an iMac with Apple's AirPort card that works with this, too.
Copyright © 2009 Gregor N. Purdy. All rights reserved.