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Hermes I, Prism 2/2.5/3, Spectrum24 Trilogy devices (orinoco)

This page describes how to enable support for WiFi devices based on the Hermes I (Lucent/Agere), Prism 2/2.5/3 (Conexant, formerly Intersil) and Spectrum24 Trilogy (Symbol) chipsets; using the Orinoco driver on Debian systems.

Contents

  1. Hermes I, Prism 2/2.5/3, Spectrum24 Trilogy devices (orinoco)
    1. Driver
    2. Installation
    3. Troubleshooting
    4. Known Issues
    5. Other Notes
    6. Supported Devices
    7. See Also
    8. External Links

This page is about the Orinoco driver. See Wikipedia for information about the ORiNOCO brand.

Driver

The Orinoco driver is a collection of modules providing support for various 802.11b devices, based on the Hermes I, Prism 2/2.5/3 or Spectrum24 Trilogy chipsets:

While Prism 2/2.5/3 chipsets are supported, use of the hostap driver is generally preferred; support for these chipsets in the Orinoco driver is disabled by default since Linux 2.6.35.1 For support of Prism-based USB 802.11b devices, see linux-wlan-ng.

As of Linux 2.6.28, downloading of firmware to volatile memory (RAM) and WPA support is available for Hermes I-based devices. For WPA support, firmware version 9.42 (or later) is required. The Orinoco driver will attempt to download firmware from userspace during device initialization.

Firmware is required to be provided for Spectrum24 Trilogy-based devices without flash memory (e.g. Intel WPC2011BWW, Socket Communications WL6000-320).

Installation

The Orinoco driver was introduced in Linux 2.4.3 and is included as modules in Debian kernel images.

WPA (Hermes I only)

You can skip this section if WPA support is not required, or if your device has a Prism or Spectrum24 Trilogy chipset.

Firmware version 9.42 or later is required for WPA support:

  1. Add a "non-free" component to /etc/apt/sources.list, for example: 

    # Debian Squeeze/6.0
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free

  2. Update the list of available packages and install the firmware-linux-nonfree package: 

    # aptitude update && aptitude install firmware-linux-nonfree

  3. Continue with the procedure below.

General

  1. Install the wireless-tools package: 

    # aptitude install wireless-tools
  2. For users with Spectrum24 Trilogy-based devices only:

    Firmware is required for devices without flash memory. This can be downloaded and extracted using the get_symbol_fw script available from orinoco-fwutils: 

    $ su
# aptitude install unzip
# exit
$ wget 'http://downloads.sourceforge.net/orinoco/orinoco-fwutils-0.3.tar.gz?download'
$ tar xvf orinoco-fwutils-0.3.tar.gz
$ cd orinoco-fwutils-0.3
$ ./get_symbol_fw
$ su
# mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/firmware
# mv symbol_sp24t_prim_fw symbol_sp24t_sec_fw /usr/local/lib/firmware
  3. If not already performed, connect the device to your system.

  4. The necessary kernel module is automatically loaded for supported devices. Verify your device has an available interface: 

    # iwconfig

  5. Configure your interface as appropriate. See also troubleshooting and known issues.

Troubleshooting

Known Issues

WPA

WEP

<!> This encryption method is deprecated and not recommended for use.

Monitor Mode

For Hermes I-based devices, Lucent/Agere firmware versions 7.xx and 8.xx are buggy with respect to monitor mode operation. The Orinoco driver will refuse to change to monitor mode if requested (e.g. via iwconfig(8)). Firmware versions <= 6.16 are required for this feature, see Other Notes regarding firmware flashing.

Monitor mode operation can be forced on buggy firmware versions by supplying force_monitor=1 as an option to the orinoco module: 

echo options orinoco force_monitor=1 >> /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf

Other Notes

The station firmware on Hermes I-based devices can only be permanently upgraded/downgraded (flashed) through utilities available for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Some Agere firmware revisions are available here. With respect to the AirPort Card, its firmware can be indirectly flashed during installation of some Mac OS X operating system versions.

Installation of the hostap-utils package will blacklist the Orinoco driver modules. This package should be purged from your system if not required.

Supported Devices

airport

The AirPort Card (not AirPort Extreme) is supported. This is an optional networking accessory for the following Apple systems:

orinoco_cs

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PC_Card explains how to identify a PC Card device.

orinoco_nortel

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of orinoco_nortel in Debian 2.6.32 (2.6.32-41) kernel images.

orinoco_pci

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of orinoco_pci in Debian 2.6.32 (2.6.32-41) kernel images.

orinoco_plx

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of orinoco_plx in Debian 2.6.32 (2.6.32-41) kernel images.

orinoco_tmd

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of orinoco_tmd in Debian 2.6.32 (2.6.32-41) kernel images.

spectrum_cs

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PC_Card explains how to identify a PC Card device.

See Also

CategoryHardware | CategoryWireless

  1. "orinoco: disable support for prism chipset by default" (git.kernel.org) (1)

  2. MPL/GPL drivers for the Wavelan IEEE/Orinoco and others: Issues and release notes (2)