cisco aironet 352 pcmcia card

[cavedweller]

I had a netgear ma 401 card and decided to get a cisco aironet 352. Installed FC2 neither card would fire up on boot. So I started googling for info. After alot of wading through hours of useless junk I finally downgraded firmware on cisco card, and got nothing. Tried changing when pcmcia started /ect/init.d/pcmcia
#chkconfig: 2345 24 96 to #chkconfig: 2345 09 96. I did this hoping that starting pcmcia before network services would cure the problem. 352 starts up, lights flashing and nothing won't do anything. Went to menu/system tools/network device control and all the devices are screwed up. So I delete them all and reboot, go to menu/system tools/internet configuration wizard to set up new wireless connection only to find out notthing deleted. So I decided I would upgrade to kernel 2.6.7 to see if there had been a fix, now no pcmcia at all. (RELOAD)Day 2 all of the above again except instead of tring to delete devices from network device control I went /etc/systemconfig/networking/devices and killed them there rebooted went to internet configuration wizard and guess what my card isn't in the list. So I set up my ethernet conection and find out that sure enough all are device are gone. Decide to go ahead and up grade kernel again sure enough pcmcia gone. (Reload)Day 3 Same as day to except I decided before doing kernel upgrade I would change the /ect/init.d/pcmcia back to #chkconfig: 2345 24 96 I did and ran chkconfig --level 2345 pcmcia reset rebooted upgrade the kernel. and again pcmcia disapeared. (Reload) Day 4 Starting to get a little frustrated at FC2 and cisco but not willing to go back to the netgear card I start again. By now there are several four letter words I use to descibe my card as well as FC2 as I start the whole process over. I decided this time I would update with yum using only stable packages so I edited yum config. updated system set /ect/init.d/pcmcia to chkconfig:2345 09 96 rebooted went into ect/systemconfig/networking/devices and deleted everything with out opening network device control. Rebooted machine pcmcia started befor network services 352 lighting up, system sees card but not working.Decided to listen to that little voice in my head that said "turn the laptop off and step away from the machine" three beers later the world was starting to become a better place. Day 5 I got up looked at the cisco card and cursed it and the day it was manufactured and got a cup of coffee. I wanted the cisco to work it cost three times as much money as the netgear did and was suppose to work just dandy in the rfmon mode with kismet. But I decided to plug the netgear in, I booted up and it associated right off the bat.

So has anyone been able to get one of the cisco cards to work? Please don't post a reply with a link to cisco's site I have been there and done that . I know this sounds bad but unless you personally have a cisco 350 series pcmcia card or have set one up on FC2 . I don't really want to hear from you. I have spent enough time googling with this problem reading countless post by people who have a system they have installed linux on and like to type that I really don't want to read any more BS. I just want to get this thing working.

Yep right now I have a bad attitude...............sorry

[marclee]

hi cavedweller,

I have an IBM Thinkpad T42 (23739VA) and a Cisco 352 PCMCIA card (yes, the T42 comes with a Intel 2200BG which I'm not using at the moment).

After a bit of hair-pulling, I managed to get my Cisco 352 working. Here are the relevant files...

add the following line to "/etc/modprobe.conf"...
alias eth2 airo_cs

(Note that you should probably use eth1 instead... I need to use eth2 because of the currently unsupported built-in 2200BG wireless module)


"/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1" contains...
----------start_of_ifcfg-eth1--------------------------------
DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Wireless
ESSID=your_essid_here
MODE=Managed
RATE=auto
KEY="restricted [1] your_hex_wep_key_here"
AP=your_access_point_mac_address
----------end_of_ifcfg-eth1----------------------------------
Notes:
- replace "your_essid_here" with the name of your ESSID
- replace "your_hex_wep_key_here" with the 26 character (13 hex digits) WEP key
- replace "your_access_point_mac_address" with the MAC address of your access point
- you can probably leave out the "AP=..." entry, I introduced it at some point during my struggle and decided to leave it in
- my "KEY=..." entry is for my home wireless setup -- shared 128bit WEP key


my "/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia" contains...
----------start_of_pcmcia------------------------------------
PCMCIA=yes
PCIC=yenta_socket
PCIC_OPTS=
CORE_OPTS=
----------end_of_pcmcia--------------------------------------

Here's the output from "cat /proc/driver/aironet/eth1/Status"...
----------start_of_Status------------------------------------
Status: CFG ACT SYN LNK PRIV KEY WEP
Mode: 3bf
Signal Strength: 55
Signal Quality: 28
SSID: ESSID_NAME_HERE
AP:
Freq: 0
BitRate: 11mbs
Driver Version: airo.c 0.6 (Ben Reed & Javier Achirica)
Device: 350 Series
Manufacturer: Cisco Systems
Firmware Version: 5.40.10
Radio type: 2
Country: 4
Hardware Version: 22
Software Version: 540
Software Subversion: a
Boot block version: 150
----------end_of_Status--------------------------------------

I also had to remove /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wifi0, which was created by FC2. (I haven't had to deal with wifi setups since kernel 2.4, but it seems like there is some kind of virtual device named wifi0 that is paired to the 'real' cisco aironet device 'eth1'.)

Lastly, I'm running the latest FC2 errata kernel (2.6.6-1.435.2.3).

I think that's all I did.

Hope this helps.

marc

[cavedweller]

thanks
I will try it tonight for now the ma401 is working

[cavedweller]

Well that didn't work. Oh well I am going to put the card up for now the netgear is working. I will try again when fc3 final comes out. If this was the only wireless card I had I would worry about it. I was just wanting to get it working for a litte recreational ware driving. The MA401 doesn't like the rfmon mode, but other than that it wooks fine. May even sell the cisco and buy something else.

[mark53]

Just thought I'd add my expierence setting up a Cisco Aironet 340 series card. my config files look like this...

/etc/modprobe.conf

alias snd-card-0 snd-maestro3
install snd-maestro3 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-maestro3 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-maestro3 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-maestro3
alias usb-controller uhci-hcd
alias ipv6 off
alias eth0 3c59x

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

This file changes to "ifcfg-eth1~ when it's parsed. And I'm using 128bit WEP.


#Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
ONBOOT=yes
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=eth1
HWADDR=00:23:66:52:13:ce
BOOTPROTO=none
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=192.168.1.3
ESSID=marknet
CHANNEL=10
MODE=Managed
RATE=Auto
AP=00:0C:41E:E0:8E
KEY="sF673OI98MH5DKDJCJUJHFG986"
DOMAIN=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
USERCTL=no
PEERDNS=yes
IPV6INIT=no

/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia

PCMCIA=yes
PCIC=yenta_socket
PCIC_OPTS=
CORE_OPTS=

I did not have to remove the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wifi0 since it did not exist.

Good luck!



[root@pine network-scripts]#

[mark53]

A few other obsevations...

You should put ...

KEY-sJB7Gh89J7H9L0KV341X980K8J

athe the bottom of...
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

The file seems to be over written if it's palced in the middle for some reason.

Also, if you have and eth0 "active" when viewed in the "System Settings", "network dialog box. Make it inactive. then reactivate eth1

Mine is working fine so far, just wish I can get it to fire up at boot time.

M.