[sheflug] Gentoo wireless laptop

[Peter Humphrey <prh [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A few days ago I was pestering the list about choice of kernel optimisation, 
and now I'm stuck again after getting that right with the list's help.

This is a Packard-Bell laptop with a 1.5GHz Mobile Celeron; it seems to be 
based on an NEC product. I have a Netgear WG102 access point, which seems 
to work ok, and I'm trying to get a Netgear WG511T card to work in the 
laptop. It did work in a Windows laptop a little while ago in combination 
with the WAP. I'm almost certain that the WAP has a DHCP server for its 
wireless clients.

The WG511T is based on the Atheros chipset (finding that out took several 
days by itself), so I've installed the madwifi drivers and I'm following 
various guides to try to get it to work. I don't know how udev affects 
things, but all my modules get loaded without any action by me (in 
particular, /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 names only one module, which 
is for the wired LAN connector on the motherboard).

I can get as far as marking ath0 up and associating it with the WAP, but I 
can't find a way to discover an IP address. Dhclient cannot get any reply 
to its broadcasts, and every time I run dhclient the machine locks solid 
some time later.

The two main guides I'm using are the Gentoo advanced networking guide and 
the madwifi beginner's how-to.

What am I doing wrong?

-- 
Rgds
Peter.

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