Bug#345647: madwifi driver causes kernel oops

[Kel Modderman]

Graham wrote:

>>It may be related to the inability of this module to do background
>>scanning, or it could just be a plain old bug in the code. Try using the
>>basic wireless-tools and refrain from using the graphical apps, and see
>>if you can reproduce this instability.
>>    
>>
>
>Hi Kel,
>
>I'm just getting started with wireless networking on Linux, so I don't
>really know what I'm doing yet. But I'll do my best to help debug
>this.
>
>Once I bring the interface up, I can run "iwlist ath0 scanning" and it
>completes, and finds my access point.
>
>ath0      Scan completed :
>          Cell 01 - Address: 00:06:25:3C:28:B9
>                    ESSID:"My WLAN"
>                    Mode:Master
>                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
>                    Quality=39/94  Signal level=-56 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
>                    Encryption key:on
>                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
>                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
>                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
>                    Extra:bcn_int=100
>                   
>Extra:wpa_ie=dd160050f20101000050f20201000050f20201000050f202
>  
>

Well, in my experience these gui apps for configuring wireless on linux 
really cause more trouble than they are worth.

>Let me know if you'd like me to try anything else. I'm off to read
>about how to set up WPA PSK.
>  
>

http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/802.11i

http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/WPA_PSK_on_Both_Ends

Maybe these are helpful starting points for using WPA with madwifi.

I would suggest executing wpa_supplicant from a pre-up line in the 
/etc/netwrok/interfaces file if using a static connection, this has 
proven to be stable on my equipment at least. For example:-

auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp
    pre-up wpa_supplicant -Dmadwifi -iath0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -B
    post-down pkill -x wpa_supplicant

Thanks, Kel.