I got a PCMCIA wifi card from the fellow who did one of the
presentations at the BAWUG meeting about 8 months ago at SFState. (He
was selling a bunch that had been used in testing for their product.) (I
don't have his name here, or I'd email him this question directly.)
I've just gotten to trying to use it, and it can tranceive fine. But, I
can't figure out how to get a list of all the APs the card is seeing.
I have a weak recollection that the brand name of the card might be
Seneao. It's an OEM card with no name printed on it, just serial #'s.
It has two connectors to go to antennas.
I'm running Debian with a personally compiled 2.4.22 kernel. I've got
the wireless-tools package installed.
When the card is inserted and working I get this info:
# cardctl ident
Socket 0:
product info: "INTERSIL", "HFA384x/IEEE", "Version 01.02", ""
manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
function: 6 (network)
# iwconfig eth1
eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"default" Nickname:"Prism I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: ...
Bit Rate:11Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=27/92 Signal level=-75 dBm Noise level=-148 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:7 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
# lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
orinoco_cs 4596 1
orinoco 35604 0 [orinoco_cs]
hermes 5988 0 [orinoco_cs orinoco]
Trying to find out how to get displayed the APs the card sees, the only
thing I could find is in the man for iwlist about the scan command.
# iwlist eth1 scan
eth1 Interface doesn't support scanning : Operation not supported
=====
Am I not doing the right thing, or can't this card display the list of
APs it sees? Or, is this a sw driver issue?
Is there perhaps a better driver to use for this card?
If it's cause of this card, is this cause it's a Prism _I_, not _II_ ?
(1, not 2, or 3?)
Is there some other way, with a direct command, to get the list of APs
it sees?
Is there some other sw that will show a list?
I'd really like a tool that shows all APs, with a graphical real time
signal strength bar for each AP, that shows each signal strength updated
at least once per second, as I scan with a directional antenna. Is
there such a thing?
What sw packages should work well with this card for AP scanning?
If this card lacks this basic ability to show the APs (perhaps because
it's a Prism 1, not 2 or better), what card would
be the overall best supported card for linux, for having an external
antenna connection, and working with AP displaying tools/sw, such as
kismet, etc?
=====
Kismet:
I ran kismet, just to see what would happen. I guess I need to read the
docs & set up some config values.
Among other things it mentions that the card must be put in rfmon mode.
Do the Orinoco/hermes drivers allow that ability?
The kismet man mentions the Prism/2 chipset with the wlan-ng driver, and
the lucent chipset with the patched orinoco driver. What driver will I
need (or should work best) with this card for kismet to work properly?
Will Kismet work with this Prism 1 card?
=====
HostAP
I recall someone saying that perhaps "hostap" is a tool I should use.
Or, perhaps it was that the reason to install the hostap package is not
for the hostap functionality itself, but because the package comes with
a driver that is better than the drivers that come standard with the
linux kernel. Err, maybe hostap was suggested to me because it is
_necessary_ to have that driver for using the card as a host (ie, the
drivers with the kernel are insufficient for letting the card act as a
host-AP.)
# dpkg -l hostap*
||/ Name Version
Description
ii hostap-source 0.1.3-3
Host AP driver for Intersil Prism2/2.5/3
ii hostap-utils 0.2.4-1
Utility programs for Host AP driver for Intersil Prism2/2.5/3
So, now I note that those don't mention Prism 1. They seem to be for a
Prism 2 or better. Will this card work with that hostap sw, or is a
Prism 1 insufficient?
Thanks!
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