dishkuvek
9th December 2005, 11:31 PM
Here is a guide to getting your airport extreme card working in Fedora Core 4
These are experimental drivers, following these instructions could lead to an unusable system
NOTE: I have a powerbook g4 1.5ghz 12", these instructions worked for me, however, development sources are needed so I have no idea if these instructions will work for everyone else.
First you need to install some packages with yum:
yum install mercurial subversion
You will also need a copy of the Airport Extreme firmware, this can be found on your OSX partition under: /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirport2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirport2
or you can extract it from this package: http://softmac.sipsolutions.net/source/?cmd=archive;node=2167883c86e8ea1917999cafcd9854e3 f6494b31;type=gz
Now go to kernel.org (http://www.kernel.org) and download the latest development kernel, it cannot be any older than 2.6.15-rc1, I used 2.6.15-rc5.
Once you have the kernel, configure and build it:
bzip2 -cd linux-2.6.15-rc5.tar.bz2 | tar xvf - -C /usr/src/
cp /boot/config-2.6.[your kernel version] /usr/src/linux-2.6.15-rc5/.config
cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.15-rc5/
make oldconfig
make
make modules_install
cp vmlinux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-rc5
cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.15-rc5
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.6.15-rc5.img 2.6.15-rc5
Now you need to edit and update your yaboot.conf. First open up /etc/yaboot.conf and add the following:
image=/vmlinuz-2.6.15-rc5
label=linux-dev
read-only
initrd=/initrd-2.6.15-rc5.img
root=/dev/[your root device]
append="rhgb quite"
Ok, now restart and boot into your new kernel, as an added bonus, the trackpad driver for the new iBooks and Powerbooks has slightly improved. At least, it seems that way.
Once you have successfully booted into your new kernel, you need to create the airport drivers. Before doing this you need to make sure the ieee80211 module is loaded, if it is not, simple issue a:
modprobe ieee80211
First download and build the softmac module:
hg clone http://softmac.sipsolutions.net/source
cd source
make
insmod ieee80211softmac.ko
Ok, now download the firmware cutter and airport extreme drivers, still in the softmac dir:
svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/bcm43xx/trunk
cd trunk/fwcutter
make
cp /location/of/AppleAirport2 .
fwcutter AppleAirport2
make installfw
cd ../driver
SOFTMAC_DIR=/full/path/to/softmac/source make
insmod bcm43xx.ko
Hopefully that worked, if it did then we need to move on to the final step, bringing the interface up:
ifconfig eth# up
iwlist eth# scan
iwconfig eth# channel #
iwconfig eth# rate #M
iwconfig eth# essid "AP_ESSID"
Ok, from here you can either dhcp your interface or assign a static ip to it. Some people have reported problems with dhcp, so you might want to try setting it to a static ip anyhow.
If all goes well, you should be ready to go! Finally you can use your airport extreme card!!!!
We should all recognize the greatness of the hard working folks that brought us these drivers. Thank you!
These are experimental drivers, following these instructions could lead to an unusable system
NOTE: I have a powerbook g4 1.5ghz 12", these instructions worked for me, however, development sources are needed so I have no idea if these instructions will work for everyone else.
First you need to install some packages with yum:
yum install mercurial subversion
You will also need a copy of the Airport Extreme firmware, this can be found on your OSX partition under: /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirport2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirport2
or you can extract it from this package: http://softmac.sipsolutions.net/source/?cmd=archive;node=2167883c86e8ea1917999cafcd9854e3 f6494b31;type=gz
Now go to kernel.org (http://www.kernel.org) and download the latest development kernel, it cannot be any older than 2.6.15-rc1, I used 2.6.15-rc5.
Once you have the kernel, configure and build it:
bzip2 -cd linux-2.6.15-rc5.tar.bz2 | tar xvf - -C /usr/src/
cp /boot/config-2.6.[your kernel version] /usr/src/linux-2.6.15-rc5/.config
cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.15-rc5/
make oldconfig
make
make modules_install
cp vmlinux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-rc5
cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.15-rc5
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.6.15-rc5.img 2.6.15-rc5
Now you need to edit and update your yaboot.conf. First open up /etc/yaboot.conf and add the following:
image=/vmlinuz-2.6.15-rc5
label=linux-dev
read-only
initrd=/initrd-2.6.15-rc5.img
root=/dev/[your root device]
append="rhgb quite"
Ok, now restart and boot into your new kernel, as an added bonus, the trackpad driver for the new iBooks and Powerbooks has slightly improved. At least, it seems that way.
Once you have successfully booted into your new kernel, you need to create the airport drivers. Before doing this you need to make sure the ieee80211 module is loaded, if it is not, simple issue a:
modprobe ieee80211
First download and build the softmac module:
hg clone http://softmac.sipsolutions.net/source
cd source
make
insmod ieee80211softmac.ko
Ok, now download the firmware cutter and airport extreme drivers, still in the softmac dir:
svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/bcm43xx/trunk
cd trunk/fwcutter
make
cp /location/of/AppleAirport2 .
fwcutter AppleAirport2
make installfw
cd ../driver
SOFTMAC_DIR=/full/path/to/softmac/source make
insmod bcm43xx.ko
Hopefully that worked, if it did then we need to move on to the final step, bringing the interface up:
ifconfig eth# up
iwlist eth# scan
iwconfig eth# channel #
iwconfig eth# rate #M
iwconfig eth# essid "AP_ESSID"
Ok, from here you can either dhcp your interface or assign a static ip to it. Some people have reported problems with dhcp, so you might want to try setting it to a static ip anyhow.
If all goes well, you should be ready to go! Finally you can use your airport extreme card!!!!
We should all recognize the greatness of the hard working folks that brought us these drivers. Thank you!