OrinocoDriver

Contents

Links
About
Drivers
Issues
1. Known Bugs
2. Other
To Do
Common Errors
FAQ
Related links

See also the LinuxDrivers page, Linux Drivers section or Linux on the PcmciaBridges, OrinocoDriver, TexasInstrument1410 pages.

About

WirelessChipset supported: Prism, Hermes and Symbol

WirelessChiset NOT supported: Hermes II (TO DO)

Features:

USB support for Hermes chipset based cards
Very large hardware support: Prism, Hermes and Symbol based cards
Fixed AP selection support: iwconfig eth0 ap 00:60:1D:01:23:45

Missing Features:

WPA support (TO DO: high priority)
Implement tx power settings
Allow sending and receiving raw 802.11 frames (TO DO: low priority)

"Apparently the Lucent cards are in fact based on the Prism II chipset, but they have a rather different firmware from many of the Prism II based cards making them appear somewhat different. I believe the MAC controller also has common ancestry with the Hermes/Prism II chipset, but has quite a few differences." [ David Gibson. Jul.'01. message, working link ]

"Well, the Prism, Symbol, Agere (Lucent) and Cisco cards are all based on the "Ocean MAC", from Digital Ocean, now a subsidiary of Intersil. For a long, long time, Agere (then Lucent) maintained the firmware for both Lucent and Intersil. Then they had a ... falling out. Hostap arrived for Intersil/Prism not long after, courtesy of some guys in Canada.

The differences between the MAC at the register level are nearly non-existant. There are quite a few differences in how the firmware in the four different cards implements various features." [Jim Thompson]

Drivers

ORiNOCO driver in Linux Kernel 2.4.x

kernel 2.4.X	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	21	22	26
orinoco	-	-	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	0.09b	0.11b	0.13b	0.13d	0.13d

ORiNOCO driver in Linux Kernel 2.6.x

kernel 2.6.x	0	5	8
orinoco	0.13e	0.13e	0.13e

http://lxr.linux.no/source/drivers/net/wireless/orinoco.c?v=2.6.5

For 2.6.x kernels you can grab 0.15 (or a release candidate) from nongnu.org orinoco and use that more recent code. Authors are active in getting their more recent code into an upcoming kernel releases (expected for 2.6.9 or later Linux kernel).

ORiNOCO Driver in Some Distributions

Distro	7.3	8.0	8.1	8.2	9.0
Mandrake	-	-	-	0.09b	0.11b
Redhat	0.09b	-	-	-	-

Firmware

The card is capable of running at least TWO firmwares. One is contained in the cards Flash memory, and the other is contained within the driver. When the card is initialized, the driver transfers it's firmware version to the cards RAM and disables the original firmware. The Client Manager tray application under "Version Info" menu reports the Flash firmware as "Variant 1" and the current running driver's firmware as "Variant 2". By using "Disable radio" menu, Flash firmware version will be reported as "Variant 1".

To update firmware under XP go to propeties on the exe file and under "Compatibility" select "Run as Win2000".

6.06 This firmware can be flashed under Windows XP with *ANY driver version.
6.16 (Winter 2001) This firmware can be flashed under Windows XP under "Agere Systems - ORiNOCO Wireless LAN PC Card (5 volt)" driver, version 7.16.0.189. Use the 6.06 Firmware flash first.
7.28 (Spring 2001) Under Windows XP you cannot upgrade to this version.
7.52 (Summer 2001) This firmware can be flashed under Windows XP under "Agere Systems - ORiNOCO Wireless LAN PC Card (5 volt)" driver, version 7.16.0.189. Use the 6.06 Firmware flash first, then 6.16 if necessary.
8.10 (Winter 2002) Added WEP Weak Key Avoidance, Monitor mode disabled on Agere 8.xx firmware in orinoco driver
8.10 OutdoorRouter This firmware is flashable under Windows XP (see also this page)
8.42 Monitor mode disabled on Agere 8.xx firmware in orinoco driver
8.72 (November 2002) Monitor mode disabled on Agere 8.xx firmware in orinoco driver Thu 20 Apr '06 Links "page cannot be found". --?

RTS, CTS are handled by the firmware, not the driver.

As of April 2007, the Proxim website and ftp doesn't appear to have *ANY old versions available. Last firmware version seems to be 8.10, last driver version 7.64 (contains 8.42 secondary "Variant 2" firmware), Client Manager 2.9.

July 2007 - I am edit The firmware 6.08 and now we can downgrade from 8.xx, I try edit 7.52 too.

6.08 I put here: http://funda.name/wsu608_or_b-bere-h.EXE

$/!\$ Edit conflict - other version:

July 2007 - I am edit The firmware 6.08 and now we can downgrade from 8.xx, I can edit 7.52 too.

6.08 I put here: http://funda.name/wsu608_or_b-bere-h.EXE

$/!\$ Edit conflict - your version:

$/!\$ End of edit conflict

Issues

Known Bugs

Ascending order.

Orinoco displays bogus values when the card is down. [Jean (Prism54-devel), November 2003]

Problems with multicast traffic, November 2003.

two networks with same ESSID, "In case there [are] two networks with the same ESSID one in Ad-hoc mode and one in Infrastructure mode there is no option to choose between them", November 2003.

[Strange Information frame lost error message] November 2003

configure for shared key auth., "No clue about how to properly configure the card's firmware for shared key authentication", November 2003.

After a lot of work I finally found out how. See helmut.gaussschule-bs orinoco. Please give me some feedback. -- linuxwiki:HelmutGrohne

version before 0.13a, "<= 0.13a version of the orinoco_pci driver doesn't have support for suspend/resume mode", December 2002.

mismatch, "Firmware version report mismatch between Linux and Windows", December 2002.

firmare changes channel, "In Ad-hoc mode firmware for no [apparent] reason changes channel", November 2002.

ESSID setting DNF, "On some firmware revisions setting ESSID='any' [does] not work"], September 2002.

no scan mode, "No scan mode available but should be soon solved", July 2002.

Ad-Hoc mode problems, "Problems with two networks in Ad-Hoc mode within range of each other", July 2002.

Firmware 8.10, "Issues with some operations and/or cards using Firmware 8.10", July 2002.

bridging, "Problems using bridging with Orinoco, June 2002.

WEP, "Problems [using[ WEP with orinoco_cs", May 2002.

Need at least 2.4.x, "The Orinoco driver won't work on 2.2.x kernels. You'll need at least a recent 2.4.x", May 2002.

Tx error, "Tx error (FID=041A) on version prior to v0.09", January 2002.

Other

change name, "No intention to add feature to change interface name through a module parameter", try IP link name or ifrename command.

To Do

Check also: [CVS TO DO List | savannah.nongnu.org TODO]

- Changing the way driver manages frames before presenting them to the kernel - Adding option to select prefered Access Point, January 2003 - Adding support for commit command to support the new version of the wireless extensions, September 2002 - Adding AP working mode support for prism chipset based cards supported by ORiNOCO driver (Compaq WL200 ...), August 2002. Priority: low
- DONE: Implemening MAC spoofing, airsnort.shmoo.com orinocoinfo (see Patch), May 2002 - Implemented in version >= 0.13. Kernel >= 2.6.0, 2.4.21 - Adding support for built-in Wireless cards on HP6100 notebook, April 2002. - Somebody should really make orinoco_cs work on kernel 2.2.X., January 2002.
- DONE: Adding Scanning/Monitor mode support to orinoco_cs, (MOrinoco patch), airsnort patch DONE since version 0.14alpha2.

Common Errors

Status 1 errors are "too many retransmits", if there are only a moderate number of these they may just be caused by noise.

- Status 4 Tx error ("disconnect") indicates that the card was unable to associate with the network. Driver sometimes send packages before it has connected it is a minor bug from driver Reference: * - "Error -16 writing packet header to BAP/Error -110 writing Tx descriptor to BAP" messages in my log?

A: This is an error reported by the firmware, but it is triggered by a major bug in all versions of the driver prior to 0.09a. Upgrade to the latest driver as soon as possible.

- I cannot compile last Orinoco driver, I get the following errors:

>[root@localhost orinoco-0.13e]# make
>> make -C /lib/modules/2.4.20-20.9/build SUBDIRS=/root/orinoco-0.13e modules
>> make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/redhat/SOURCES'
>> make[1]: *** No rule to make target `modules'. Stop.
>> make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/redhat/SOURCES'
>> make: *** [modules] Error 2

The ORiNOCO Makefile is trying to use the Linux 2.5/2.6 kbuild system to compile itself. You need to download a 2.4.20 or later kernel tree from kernel.org, unpack it somewhere, point /lib/modules/2.4.20-20.9/build to the directory where the source code is, and try again.

FAQ

Is it possible to change the firmware using Linux? Answer: No.

Is Power Management supported? A: Yes, but we don't know how good the support is.

Does Orinoco driver support Monitor mode?
A: Monitor Mode is completely experimental [in that] no one has any documentation on it. Since v0.14alpha2 (19 Apr 2004) it is experimentaly supported. Upgrade your Orinoco drivers. For an older version you will have to patch the driver (airsnort.shmoo.com orinocoinfo), then enabling monitor mode is easy with this driver, similar to the Prism2 cards. You can only enable monitor mode on one channel at a time, however you can use the kismet_hopper program from the excellent Kismet sniffer program to enable channel hopping.
Anyway monitor mode is disabled on Agere 8.xx firmware. Most of the time monitor mode works fine on the 8.xx firmwares, but occasionally it falls over very, very nastily. If anybody wants 8.xx workarounds to be in the driver, please send a tested patch. Testing should include running AirSnort with channel scanning for at least one hour.
-M

How can I check if my driver supports monitor mode? --necessary to run Airsnort, Kismet, or any other wireless program which needs to sniff.
Answer:

Execute: >iwpriv eth1
eth1 Available private ioctl :
          force_reset (8BE0) : set 0 & get 0
          card_reset (8BE1) : set 0 & get 0
          set_port3 (8BE2) : set 1 int & get 0
          get_port3 (8BE3) : set 0 & get 1 int
          set_preamble (8BE4) : set 1 int & get 0
          get_preamble (8BE5) : set 0 & get 1 int
          set_ibssport (8BE6) : set 1 int & get 0
          get_ibssport (8BE7) : set 0 & get 1 int
          monitor (8BE8) : set 2 int & get 0
          dump_recs (8BFF) : set 0 & get 0

Basically if you don't see "monitor" in this list, you'll need to patch your driver or get another one in order to enable monitor mode manually. (I looked at the kismet_monitor program to get this.)

What firmware versions work in monitor mode?
A: In theory any version <=7.42 should work, but check this with other messages at only work with 6.16, January 2005.

How to know if you are in official Ad-Hoc mode, or in Ad-Hoc demo mode?
A: Command "iwpriv ethXX get_port3" should tell you:
0 means IBSS mode, 1 means old Lucent demo ad-hoc mode, except that for reasons I've never been able to figure out, this doesn't seem to work properly. IBSS is the default on Lucent firmwares 6.06 and later.

Links