After struggling to get my PCMCIA airo350 wireless card to work with PEAP in NUS for years, I finally caved in and used ndiswrapper. I know, I know, kernel 2.6.17 and above is supposed to support it, but that is for cards with firmware version 5.30.17 "or later". My card is 5.60.x, which is too much later, I guess.

Grabbing the files from Windows XP

So, no choice but to use ndiswrapper. So I boot to Windows, and checked out the files used by the Aironet 350 device (driver properties -> files), and grabbed the files c:\windows\inf\netx500.inf and c:\windows\system32\drivers\pcx500.sys. Just FYI, pcx500mp.sys is for the Aironet 350 Mini-PCI card.

Installing the Windows drivers

Then I boot into Linux, and installed ndiswrapper(1.33), and wpa_supplicant (v0.5.7).

Next, I have to install the drivers. This was easy. First make sure the 2 files are in the same directory, then install the driver.

# install the driver
root $ /sbin/ndiswrapper -i /path/to/netx500.inf

# check the driver is installed
root $ /sbin/ndiswrapper -l
netx500 : driver installed

# insert the pcmcia card, then load ndiswrapper
root $ modprobe ndiswrapper

# check ndiswrapper is loaded
root $ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
ndiswrapper           195284  0

root $ dmesg
[...]
ndiswrapper version 1.33 loaded
usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

There's a problem. Ndiswrapper is not able to automatically create the PCMCIA configuration. I have to do this by manually. I wrote one using the configuration it has already generated (14B9:0350.5.conf) as a guide.

# save this as /path/to/ndiswrapper/netx500/14B9:929B.8.conf (e.g /etc/ndiswrapper/netx500/14B9\:929B.8.conf)
# the '8' in the filename is because CardBus is device type 8.

NdisVersion|0x50001
Environment|1
class_guid|4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318
NetworkAddress|XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
driver_version|,07/01/2001,7.29.0.0
BusType|8

FormFactor|PCMCIA
InfrastructureMode|1
LowerRange|ethernet
MediaDisconnectDamper|10
NodeName|
PowerSaveMode|0
RadioName|PC3500
Service|PCX500
SSID1|
SupportedRates|0
UpperRange|ndis5

Now we have to link the Cardbus PCMCIA slot to this configuration. As Cardbus slots are detected as PCI devices, we can use lspci.

# this is the CardBus device we have to take note of
root $ lspci
[...]
01:0b.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC95 (rev 07)

# Get the manufacturer's device ID (xxxx:xxxx)
root $ lspci -n
[...]
01:0b.0 0607: 1179:060a (rev 07)

# create a symlink for the configuration to this device
# Note the capital letters
root $ cd /directory/of/14B9:929B.8.conf
root $ ln -s 14B9:929B.8.conf 1179\:060A.5.conf
root $ ls -al
1179:060A.5.conf -> 14B9:929B.8.conf
14B9:0340.5.conf
14B9:0350.5.conf
14B9:4800.5.conf
14B9:929B.8.conf
netx500.inf
pcx500.sys

The kernel might already have the opensource driver running. To prevent it from loading these modules (aka drivers) instead, we need to black list them in /etc/modprobe.conf

# blacklist the modules
blacklist airo_cs
blacklist airo

# alias the interface to eth1 (or wlan0 if that's your 
alias eth1 ndiswrapper

So now we have installed and setup ndiswrapper for this PCMCIA card.

Starting the card

Restart the system!!! Okay, there's no need to do that, but I'm lazy... Besides, I just upgraded a ton of other stuff too...

root $ modprobe ndiswrapper
root $ lsmod

Using WPA Supplicant

Since I'm using PEAP (yes, I know it's not secure. NUS doesn't care.... It's their newly installed "secure" wireless system.), I have to get wpa_supplicant to work too.

Hmm... I'm getting tired of typing. I'll just plonk my wpa_supplicant configuration here then...

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel
ap_scan=2    # seem to work only if set to 2
eapol_version=2

network={
        disabled=0
        priority=1
        ssid="NUS"
        scan_ssid=1
        key_mgmt=IEEE8021X
        eap=PEAP
        phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
        identity="user@nus.edu.sg"
        password="password"
        ca_cert="/path/to/ase1.pem"
}
network={
        disabled=1
        ssid="NUSOPEN"
        scan_ssid=1
        key_mgmt=NONE
        priority=2
}
network={
        disabled=1
        key_mgmt=NONE
        priority=-9999999
}

Okok... I won't leave you in the berth. Here's a howto on NUS PEAP configuration