AP FC8

From M1Research

WiFi Hardware

As we are going build WPA protected Access Point it's required authorization daemon supports our hardware. Authorization software based on hostapd. As seen from hostapd's home page it support chipsets/drivers:

• Host AP driver for Prism2/2.5/3
• madwifi (Atheros ar521x)
• Prism54.org (Prism GT/Duette/Indigo)

After some research on our local PC components market we choose D-link DWA-520 that is Atheros chipset based:

[root@dev-1 ~]# lspci -vvv
--skipped--
01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor (rev 01)
        Subsystem: D-Link System Inc Unknown device 3a73
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Latency: 168 (2500ns min, 7000ns max), Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 23
        Region 0: Memory at ff8f0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=375mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=2 PME-
        Kernel driver in use: ath_pci
        Kernel modules: ath_pci
--skipped--

and supported by madwifi drivers.

Generic Installation

Generic installation steps:

• install WiFi pci board
• install additional ethernet adapter (we want 2 adapters: 1st WAN, 2nd LOCAL LAN)
• install minimal Fedora Core 8 installation
• update all installed Fedora packeges
• install required packages for building madwifi drivers and hostapd:
  • gcc
  • openssl-devel
  • kernel package development (in my case kernel-devel-2.6.25.9-40.fc8)
  • dhcp
  • bind, bind-chroot
  • bridge-utils
• download to /usr/local/src http://madwifi.org/ madwifi] driver and hostapd source code:
  • madwifi-0.9.4.tar.gz
  • hostapd-0.6.3.tar.gz

Building/configuring driver

Unpack madwifi-0.9.4.tar.gz to /usr/local/src:

[root@dev-1 ~]# cd /usr/local/src
[root@dev-1 src]# gzip -cd madwifi-0.9.4.tar.gz | tar xf -

Goto source code directory, build and install:

[root@dev-1 src]# cd madwifi-0.9.4
[root@dev-1 madwifi-0.9.4]# make
Checking requirements... ok.
Checking kernel configuration... ok.
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.25.9-40.fc8/build SUBDIRS=/usr/local/src/madwifi-0.9.4 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.25.9-40.fc8-i686'
  CC [M]  /usr/local/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/if_ath.o
--skipped--
gcc -o ath_info -g -O2 -Wall ath_info.c
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/madwifi-0.9.4/tools'
[root@dev-1 madwifi-0.9.4]# make install