Debian config on DELL precision M50 laptop

Debian 3.1 rev0a "Sarge" installation and configuration

Useful commands to probe the system


$ su
(root password)
$ rpm -qa|grep kernel
$ rpm -qa|grep orinoco
$ uname -a
$ iwconfig
$ ls -lR /usr/lib/hotplug
$ dmesg
$ lspci -vv


Wireless Card: DELL TrueMobile 1150

from dmesg:
orinoco.c 0.13e (David Gibson and others)
orinoco_cs.c 0.13e (David Gibson and others)
eth1: Station identity 001f:0001:0008:0048
eth1: Looks like a Lucent/Agere firmware version 8.72
eth1: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth1: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth1: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth1: MAC address 00:02:2D:7C:33:BF
eth1: Station name "HERMES I"
eth1: ready
eth1: index 0x01: Vcc 3.3, irq 11, io 0x0100-0x013f
eth1: New link status: Connected (0001)

Driver information:

http://www.nongnu.org/orinoco/


This page:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Linux.Wireless.drivers.802.11b.html#WavelanIEEE
notes that the driver does not support roaming (the hardware does have this functionality under winXP).

This page:

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html#drivers
indicates that orinoco v0.13 does not support wireless scanning and events. However, this page also notes that v0.14 does have these features, so I need to upgrade this driver to v0.14. How is this done?

Upgraded Orinoco Driver provides search (roam) functions

From:


http://www.nongnu.org/orinoco/


Downloaded orinoco driver, not the latest version that requires kernel >= 2.6.11, but version 0.15rc2, into /usr/src and ran

su root ...
tar zxvf orinoco-0.15rc2.tar.gz
cd orinoco-0.15rc2
# check the README, only then
make
make install

and restarted the system, then checked the dmesg output:

orinoco 0.15rc2STA (David Gibson, Pavel Roskin, et al)
orinoco_cs 0.15rc2STA (David Gibson, Pavel Roskin, et al)
eth1: Hardware identity 0005:0004:0005:0000
eth1: Station identity 001f:0001:0008:0048
eth1: Firmware determined as Lucent/Agere 8.72
eth1: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth1: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth1: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth1: MAC address 00:02:2D:7C:33:BF
eth1: Station name "HERMES I"
eth1: ready
eth1: index 0x01: Vcc 3.3, irq 11, io 0x0100-0x013f
eth1: New link status: Connected (0001)

dnlweber:/home/dweber# iwconfig eth1
eth1 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"XXXXX" Nickname:"HERMES I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:14:6C:1D:37:02
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Sensitivity:1/3
Retry limit:4 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:XXXXXXXXXXX Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=20/92 Signal level=-66 dBm Noise level=-86 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:5
Tx excessive retries:5 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


Now the driver will provide search functions:

dnlweber:/home/dweber# iwlist eth1 scan
eth1 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:14:6C:1D:37:02
ESSID:"XXXXXX"
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Signal level:-65 dBm Noise level:-88 dBm
Encryption key:on

Testing wpa_supplicant

To be continued ...