Angstrom + Belkin WiFi, Help?

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1

Hi,

I'm trying to get a Belkin USB WiFi adapter to work with Angstrom.

I'm a little confused. As near as I can tell, the system is
recognizing the device. At boot I see the following:

[10285.889739] usb 2-2.1: new high speed USB device using ehci-omap
and address 3
[10286.031890] usb 2-2.1: New USB device found, idVendor=050d,
idProduct=705e
[10286.043975] usb 2-2.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2,
SerialNumber=3
[10286.061401] usb 2-2.1: Product: Belkin Wireless G USB Adapter
[10286.072113] usb 2-2.1: Manufacturer: Manufacturer_Realtek
[10286.085601] usb 2-2.1: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001

But if I issue the iwconfig command I get the following:

# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

I'm running Angstrom 2010.7 on a Rev C2 BeagleBoard. The Belkin
adapter is an F5D7050.

What am I missing here? lsmod doesn't seem to indicate that any
modules have loaded for the device so I suspect that might be part of
the problem.

Anybody have any advice?

thanks.

2

I rebuilt the Angstrom image on Narcissus and selected 'All Kernel
Modules' and that seemed to make a big difference. The Belkin USB
WiFi adapter is now recognized. Now I need to get WPA_Supplicant
setup correctly.

Any advice?

3

if you already have iwconfig, and if iwconfig shows you a wireless interface, you can now:

opkg install wpa_supplicant
opkg install wpa-gui

Now simply use wpa-gui to scan for networks and connect to the one you prefer.

Before running wpa-gui you’ll need to start wpa_supplicant with some parameters, such as:

wpa_supplicant -Dwext -i wlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Rafael

4

The problem with this is that I'm running the thing headless (ie. I
have no display for gui applications). I'm thinking about connecting
via wired ethernet (via ssh) and exporting the display back back to my
Ubuntu host. I should be able to run the wpa-gui then.

Using wpa_cli and a hand-crafted wpa_supplicant.conf file I've got to
a point where it tries to associate with my AP but never succeeds in
associating.

Seems crazy that it is this complicated.

Mike

5

Hi Mike,

I am also running it without a display. Of course you can export the display to your desktop PC using export DISPLAY and xhost, but in my cause, I installed a VNC server and started a vnc session. Then connected to it.

I also got wifi working without GUI generating a wpa_supplicant.conf file with wpa_passphrase. I typed the wpa password, and wrote the output to wpa_passphrase.

As you said, you can do this over ssh, but you can also issue these text based commands over the serial console.

hope it helps

Rafael

6

wpa-gui doesn't appear to be an available package. At least opkg
says: "Unknown pacakge 'wpa-gui'.

Any thoughts on why I would get that? On the Angstrom site I can
browse the packages and I see the package.

When I do a 'opkg list | grep wpa' I don't see wpa-gui.

Strange.

7

Do you mind if I ask what USB WiFi adapter you are using what your
wpa_supplicant.conf file looks like?

thanks,

mike

8

There is a long file (default wpa_supplicant.conf) with many comments, and at the end:

network={
ssid=“MyNED”
#psk=“MySecret”
psk=84a06ae919529ddd146982aee8fcde2b28992a69974abe9bd9a64bf6c82047a3
}

psk= was generated with wpa_passphrase

About your last question, I do have wpa_gui installed from opkg:

root@beagleboard:~# opkg list |grep wpa |grep -v lowpan
gst-plugin-rawparse - 0.10.20-r11.0.6 - GStreamer plugin for rawparse
gst-plugin-rawparse-dev - 0.10.20-r11.0.6 - GStreamer plugin for rawparse (development files)
wpa-gui - 0.6.9-r1.5 - Qt interface for choosing which configured network to connect to. It also provides a method for browsing 802.11 SSID scan results, an event history log of messages generated by wpa_supplicant, and a method to add or edit wpa_supplicant networks.
wpa-gui-dbg - 0.6.9-r1.5 - Qt interface for choosing which configured network to connect to. It also provides a method for browsing 802.11 SSID scan results, an event history log of messages generated by wpa_supplicant, and a method to add or edit wpa_supplicant networks.
wpa-gui-dev - 0.6.9-r1.5 - Qt interface for choosing which configured network to connect to. It also provides a method for browsing 802.11 SSID scan results, an event history log of messages generated by wpa_supplicant, and a method to add or edit wpa_supplicant networks.
wpa-supplicant - 0.6.9-r6.1.6 - A Client for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).
wpa-supplicant-dbg - 0.6.9-r6.1.5 - A Client for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).
wpa-supplicant-dev - 0.6.9-r6.1.6 - A Client for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).
wpa-supplicant-doc - 0.6.9-r6.1.6 - A Client for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).
wpa-supplicant-passphrase - 0.6.9-r6.1.6 - A Client for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).

Did you execute opkg update before searching/installing?

Rafael

9

I was just going to post a follow-up:
1) I'm pretty sure the adapter is bad. I can't even get it to
associate with a open SID. Its also really hot.
2) I figured out the hard way that 'opkg update' is a good idea.

As I was logging in to post this, I saw your post. You're spot on,
after I did a opkg update the wpa_gui app showed up as available.

I've ordered a new adapter and start over.

Thanks for the help Rafael.

Mike

10

I was just going to say “try wpa_gui instead of wpa-gui” but it looks like you figured it out. :slight_smile: well done

A hot adapter is a very bad sign. My general strategy is to try it on my host, and if it doesn’t work there then it won’t work on the Beagle.

11

can any one tell me how to create the linux image for qemu??
I want to emulate the linux kernel before trying that on beagleboard. I
tried to self compile one kernel and used its vmlinux qith qemu but qemu
terminated with a error which says initial address out of range
(something like that). I think i need to convert the initial address but
i dont know what is the address taken by qemu.
also do i have to patch my kernel also for qemu??

12

can any one tell me how to create the linux image for qemu??

The kernel config is different than the one you use for BeagleBoard.

I want to emulate the linux kernel before trying that on beagleboard.

I did the same thing for BeagleBox. I created Makefile targets to build
a QEMU environment (kernel, buildroot) and targets to launch QEMU. That
way I could test the BeagleBox UI (BUI).

I can't tell you how to do it with OE or Angstrom (which uses bitbake),
but for an example of how it can be done with Makefiles you can take a
look at BeagleBox's build.

http://www.graphics-muse.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=BeagleBox.BeagleBox

Note that my method requires building the kernel and buildroot for QEMU
in one manner, and the run time versions for BeagleBoard separately.

13

It seems my thread got accidentally hi-jacked. I'm changing the
subject back to what it was so the original discussion on the original
subject ins't lost. I think the questions regarding QEMU were
intended for a thread of it's own. Can it be moved?

Thanks,

Mike

14

That was the problem. I ordered this adapter on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002VX0GJY/ref=oss_product Not too
shabby for $13.

Just got it and it's associating with my open network.

Thanks for the help.

Mike

15

Hi Mike,

Apologies if you’ve already been through this but I worked through using the
USB Belkin Wireless G adaptor this week and had some trouble so maybe
I can help…

First off I bought this as others I have don’t seem to work and this was
recommended as tested and working with the Beagleboard. The module
is an FD050xx. I had some confusion about which kernel modules I needed
as there seeems to be some misinformation floating around in Google, but
I found in the end I needed the rtl8187 driver. You’re probably best installing
all the kernel modules as other commentators have suggested.

With them opkg installed, and also wireless-tools and wpa_supplication
(as the WiFi adaptor I’m using is WPA-PSK secured) I think I had everything
I needed. I did add a load of packages in though until I had a working combination
so I might have missed something here.

At this point the USB adaptor was detected and usbcore registered an rtl8187
driver.

I went through using wpa_password to create a configuration file for the
appropriate ESSID.

wpa_password myessid > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
here lies my passphrase < enter >

You might need to tidy up the .conf file as I ended up with some messaging
from the utility in there too.

Then I used wpa_supplicant (advice seemed to be to add to /etc/init.d/rcS but
that seemed a bit of a hack and sure enough you can uncomment what you need
in /etc/network/interfaces.

e.g.

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
#wpa-driver hostap

NB. Leave the wpa-driver bit out (I think I added it from more internet posts)
as it isn’t used for this chipset and you’ll get PRISM errors - another chipset)

So that got me to the point that every now and again I could get the adaptor
to connect, but I was getting weird messages about the link not being ready
all the time. It seemed to be the type of thing you’d get with a signal strength
issue but after much hair-pulling I finally discovered there is a contention
between this mechanism and something ‘connmand’ was doing.

The suggestion was to disable execution on connman by issuing

chmod -x /etc/init.d/comman

Now I’m sure Koen will tut tut me as no doubt there is a better solution,
but it worked for me, and I’d spent enough time on this.

Good luck!

Alex