From: Jeff Meden (blade_at_ncweb.com)
Date: 2002-08-09 22:21:20 UTC
thanks for the info! figured id send it along to the list in case anyone
else is interested...
attached mail follows:
Take a look at the webpage for the wireless tools.
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html
Part of the way down in the FAQ there's a little section about iwconfig complaining about card/devices using a different version of Wireless Extensions. According to the page, you'll need to recompile the wireless tools package after doing the following:
"cp /usr/src/linux/include/linux/wireless.h /usr/include/linux"
I've had the "extensions complaint" problem and this always fixes it. One thing to keep in mind is to make sure you copy wireless.h from the source compile tree of the currently running kernel.
Here's a first pass at a breakdown of how this all works:
The Kernel of course manages all the pieces. I.E., communication between the hardware and the software and user space. It'll sometimes load modules to accomplish this. The HostAP module has the code to deal with a specific type of hardware, namely wireless cards with the prism2 chipset.
Wireless Extensions is a generic set of API(application program interface) that allows drivers (modules like the hostap driver) to provide information (configuration, status, etc) to user space. The Extensions specify to the drivers what kind of information to provide and how to provide it. In this case, information is written out to "/proc/net/wireless". There do seem to be a few other files in the kernel source tree that are important to telling the kernel about wireless stuff, but it seems that the Extensions are mostly specified in the wireless.h header file.
Wireless Tools is a set of programs that allow you to interact with the Extensions. It's text based and allows for retrieving and setting of the information provided by Wireless Extensions. These programs rely on wireless.h since that specifies the API calls to make for interactions. "wireless.h" is a work in progress and goes through version changes. As a result of this, if a driver is compiled with one version of wireless.h and Wireless Tools is compiled with a different version, you'll get the "version complaint".
I don't know if this high level view is what you were looking for. I am in the process of trying to write a "how to" for HostAP for people trying to get the driver running.
Esteban Gutierrez
On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Jason Boxman wrote:
> On Thursday 08 August 2002 07:14 pm, Jeff Meden wrote:
> > Can someone explain or point me towards a explanation of the pieces
> > involved in running the hostap driver. Ive sucessfully built hostap
> > systems for cards but still dont really see how the Kernel, Wireless
> > Extenions, Wireless Tools, and HostAP fit together. This is related to
> > some issues ive been having recently with the wireless tools complaining
> > about the wrong version of wireless extensions being used by the
> > wireless cards. Thanks in advance for the help!
>
> Well, the wireless extensions allow device drivers to conform to a standard
> way of manipulating the wireless hardware via the wireless tools. (Or at
> least, that's how it seems -- If I'm wrong someone will call me on it.) And,
> HostAP is the driver option, of course.
>
> I don't know anything about wrong versions of wireless extensions. Perhaps
> you need a more recent copy of the Linux kernel? I'm using 2.4.18 with the
> latest release of HostAP and everything 'just works' on this end. I have a
> LinkSys WPC11 PCI card with the latest firmware update LinkSys has made
> available.
>
> > Jeff Meden
>