rt25xx BeOS driver

http://patrick.lafarguette.free.fr/en/beos/rt25xx/

Introduction

This driver manages the wireless network adapters based on the Ralink RT2500 chipset following the IEEE 802.11g standard.
It is developped with a Sitecom WL-115 PCI card and a Sitecom WL-112 Cardbus adapter.
The network environment is a Linksys WRT54G wireless router and an ADSL Internet access.

Features

The driver allows the network card to act as a station of a BSS (Basic Service Set) linked to an access point and in monitor mode.
The WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) is managed with keys of 40 or 104 bits for a global level of protection of 64 or 128 bits.

Device support

PCI

Vendor and device identifiers supported by this driver are presented below.

1814:0201 Ralink RT2500 802.11bg WLAN PCI

Cardbus

Vendor and device identifiers supported by this driver are presented below.

1814:0201 Ralink RT2500 802.11bg WLAN Cardbus PC card

Disclaimer

This driver is copyrighted © 2005 by Patrick Lafarguette. All Rights Reserved.
Some portions of code are copyrighted © by Be Incorporated.
No warranty.
Use at your own risk.

Installation

There is no need to install the add-on for using the driver with BONE.

PCI

  1. Open the driver folder. Drag the file rt25xx in the folder named drop driver here.
  2. Create a link in the folder /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers/dev/net to the driver named /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers/bin/rt25xx.
  3. Go to parent folder.
  4. Open the add-on folder. Drag the file rt25xx in the folder named drop add-on here.
  5. Go to parent folder.
  6. Open the configuration folder. Drag the file rt25xx in the folder named drop configuration file here.
  7. Reboot. After reboot, you will see a new device in the Network preferences panel.
  8. Setup your device and restart networking.

Cardbus

The driver needs the cb_enabler module located in the /boot/beos/system/add-ons/kernel/bus_managers folder.
This module can be found in the Cardbus Modem Driver file.

  1. Open the driver folder. Drag the file rt25xx_cb in the folder named drop driver here.
  2. Create a link in the folder /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers/dev/net to the driver named /boot/home/config/add-ons/kernel/drivers/bin/rt25xx_cb.
  3. Go to parent folder.
  4. Open the add-on folder. Drag the file rt25xx_cb in the folder named drop add-on here.
  5. Go to parent folder.
  6. Open the configuration folder. Drag the file rt25xx_cb in the folder named drop configuration file here.
  7. Reboot. After reboot, you will see a new device in the Network preferences panel.
  8. Setup your device and restart networking.

Configuration file

The configuration file is used to specify wireless settings.

mode Specify the kind of the wireless network. 0 for an IBSS, peer to peer network, 1 for a BSS, infrastructure network with an access point or 2 for monitor mode. The default value is 1.
Warning: in monitor mode, the device must be disabled in the Network preferences panel and be used only with the application BeNetworkCapture.
channel Specify the radio channel to use. Possible values are from 1 to 14.
ssid Specify the name of the network to join or create. Up to 32 characters. If this value is not specified in BSS mode, the adapter can join all the existing networks.
privacy Specify if the frames are encrypted. 0 disable privacy. 1 enable WEP 64 bits and 2 enable WEP 128 bits. The default value is 0
authentication Specify the authentication type. 0 open system authentication. 1 shared key authentication (requires WEP). The default value is 0.
format Specify the WEP keys format. 0 ASCII. 1 hexadecimal string. The default value is 0
key0,
key1,
key2,
key3
Define the four keys associated with WEP. A key is a succession of 5 or 13 ASCII characters or 10 or 26 hexadecimal characters according to the selected format and level of privacy.

Syslog

You can enable syslog output to get useful debugging information.

  1. Copy the file named /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/sample/kernel to /boot/home/config/settings/kernel/drivers/kernel.
  2. Edit this file and uncomment the line syslog_debug_ouput true.
  3. After reboot, the file named /var/log/syslog will receive debug information from the driver.

Send me the syslog file with your bug's reports.

Author

This driver is written by Patrick Lafarguette.
German translation is done by Andre Stark.
Feel free to email me for bug report or enhancement request.

History

Version 0.0.6 12/22/2005 Monitor mode support.
Version 0.0.5 11/05/2005 Cardbus device support.
Hardware WEP support for privacy. Keys of 40 and 104 bits are managed.
Software WEP support for shared key authentication.
Version 0.0.4 09/11/2005 First public release.
Basic support.
Only BSS without privacy.
Channel and ssid must be set and refer to a valid BSS.