WLAN

The WLAN-chip used is a Prism2 / Prism2.5 / Prism3 on an internal USB bus. If you press Fn+F8 it is like plugging in a USB-WLAN-Stick.

For kernels 2.6

Download the latest version of linux-wlan-ng (at least ver. 0.2.1pre26), compile and install the prism2_usb module (./Configure; make all; make install as root).

For kernels 2.4

Download linux-wlan-ng (NB: there can be problems when compiling ver. 0.2.1pre26, in that case use 0.2.1pre25 instead), compile and install the prism2_usb module (./Configure; make all; make install as root).

Then load the module

modprobe prism2_usb

before activating the WLAN. When activating the WLAN without having loaded the module I got a kernelpanic with nice blinkenlights.

To do this automatically at boot-time insert the name of the module into /etc/modules.

Another possibility to automate the loading of the module is adding the following line to /etc/modules.conf (usually not necessary):

alias wlan0 prism2_usb

Finally configure the WLAN-settings in the files in /etc/wlan/ which are commented very well.

The WLAN firmware is not uploaded automatically as when inserting a PCMCIA-card. Thus it might be necessary to run /etc/init.d/wlan restart in order to explicitly tell the flybook to upload the firmware and bring the interface up.

I don't know if this is a general problem with USB-WLAN-sticks or just with the type used in the flybook. At least I found a solution, perhaps a little - ehm - creative, but it works ;-)

When using usbmgr:

(with hotplug everything may work out of the box or has to be configured somewhere in /etc/hotplug/)

To bring the interface up automatically create a new (executable) file called /etc/usbmgr/wlan:
-------- /etc/usbmgr/wlan --------
#!/bin/sh
sleep 5
/etc/init.d/wlan restart
sleep 4
ifdown wlan0
ifup wlan0
-------- /etc/usbmgr/wlan --------


Insert the following line into /etc/usbmgr/usbmgr.conf:
vendor 0x124a product 0x168b script wlan module prism2_usb

Now the file /etc/usbmgr/wlan will be run each time the WLAN is switched on and the interface will be brought up.

If you find an easier way to automate this with usbmgr please send me an e-mail.

When switching off WLAN, simply press Fn+F8, to the flybook this is like plugging off an USB-WLAN-Stick and thus works perfectly well.