[Click] madwifi.stripped driver issues

[Nels Anderson]

Aloha,

Sorry about the delayed response, but this does clear up what's going on quite a
bit.  It also makes doing what I'd like to do much easier.  Thanks again for
the information and I'll ask if I have any more issues.

-Nels

Quoting John Bicket <jbicket at amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu>:

> Hi Nels,
>
> Sorry there isn't much documentation on the driver - if you let me know
> a little more about what you're trying to do I can probably help you get
> a configuration that does what you want to.
>
> Here is some more info about the driver and what exactly it does and
> why it's probably not doing what you expect:
>
> The stripped driver functions a little differently that most device
> drivers - it sends and receives 802.11 packets, not 802.3 (normal
> ethernet). The normal madwifi driver handles this decapsulation and
> encapsulation, and looks to linux like a ethernet driver.
> There are click elements that will do this for you
> (see WifiDecap and WifiEncap in the elements/wifi directory).
>
> Since linux doesn't understand
> 802.11 packets and has no stack built in for them, you must use a click
> configuration to send and receive packets. (linux will just discard the
> packets since they don't look like normal ethernet/ip packets).
>
>
> There are some sample configurations in the madwifi.stripped/etc directory.
>
> The madwifi.stripped driver is probably useful for you if you want to do
> one of
> - build your own access point with its own tx rate control, power
>   control, or association rules.
> - work in adhoc mode (to get around bssid partitions since it seems the
>   802.11 spec doesn't really support mult-hop routing in practice).
> - use click to design a handoff protocol.
> - anything that uses 802.11 management packets (association,
>   authentication) , but not control packets (acks, rts/cts).
>
>
>
> Nels Anderson [Nels.Anderson at colorado.edu] wrote:
> >Aloha,
> >
> >Greetings again, I'm having some issues getting the madwifi.stripped driver
> to
> >function properly.  I built wifi-enabled click, using the latest from the
> cvs,
> >pointing it appropriately to the madwifi.stripped driver.  It built fine,
> after
> >I patched it into a 2.4.26 kernel, as did the madwifi.stripped driver
> itself.
> >When I do 'modprobe ath_pci', ath_pci, ath_hal and click_wifi are loaded.
> >Everything seems fine up to this point, nothing aberrant shows up in
> >/var/log/messages or anything like that.
> >
> >However, despite the fact that the modules are loaded, the card can't
> actually
> >connect to anything.  I can set the essid however I please, but it can't
> find
> >any access points.  I setup another machine with wireless in monitor mode
> and
> >it couldn't see any packets from my machine, even though they were just a
> few
> >feet away.  It could see packets from yet another machine across the room
> just
> >fine though.  No packets are coming off the card at all, to the best of my
> >knowledge.
> >
> >Now when I use the most recent sourceforge madwifi drivers, everything works
> >fine.  So I don't think the card itself is bad. I've got a D-Link AirXpert
> >(DWL-AG650) card.  I'm wondering if anything has seen this kind of thing
> before
> >or know what else I could look at to try and figure out what's going on.  I
> >realize this is a bit vague, but I'm sort of at a loss for what to check
> next
> >myself.  If you need any more information, I'll provide as much as a I can.
> As
> >always, any assistance is greatly appreciated.  Thanks,
> >
> >-Nels
> >_______________________________________________
> >click mailing list
> >click at amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu
> >https://amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/click
>