Airport card, hostap and WPA supplicant

[Derick Centeno]

On Tue, 2004-12-21 at 13:13, Derick Centeno wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 11:07, joev_nylxs at pipeline.com wrote:
> > I have a TI laptop with YDL 2.3, Kernal 2.4.20. My building has just
> > installed wireless broadband but they use WPA for authentication. The
> > people who set up this system said I need to get the hostap driver and
> > WPA supplicant.
> > 
> > The build for hostap went fine with no errors. When I run modprobe, to
> > load the hostap driver, I get an error that says the device cannot be
> > found.
> > 
> > Has anyone had any sucess with this?
> > 
> > Thanks
> > Joe
> > 
> 
> According to a reference which you may examine at:
> http://hostap.epitest.fi/
> 
> You may not need it as the Apple's builtin wireless card (if you have
> it) supports the latest defined Wifi and hostap is for Prism hardware
> support.  If you don't have the wireless card then all you need is
> Apple's wireless portable thingy which plugs in anywhere and you've got
> an instant wireless network again if you have a card installed your
> laptop.  
> 
> You should be able to do fine using Apple's latest OS X software which
> is more stable and secure than any Linux environment anyway. But if you
> must use Linux then you must at least upgrade your YDL to at least YDL
> 3.0.1 and upgrade your kernel to at least linux 2.6.5 or later.  Then
> your linux kernel and drivers will be more current to interface with
> other systems from the Linux side. 
> 
You were not very specific in describing which laptop you have and what
it uses as a wireless card.  Still if you have a G4 laptop you should be
using YDL 4 which is the latest version of Linux for Macs and which can
be installed for you by Terra Soft without voiding Apple's warranty.  No
other distribution can say that...a lot of people writing to this list
forget that.

Upgrading kernels is not for the meek at heart...if you believe that the
technical issues are a bit beyond your current skills then I'd evaluate
carefully what I need vs. what I can afford and consider getting a new
installation and laptop (if my hardware and software are just too
archaic) and get a new Mac with YDL 4.0 preinstalled by Terra Soft.  The
advantage will be everything will work for you out of the box in both
YDL 4.0 and Mac OS X and the Apple warranty will not be voided!

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes....