Hostap Driver for PCI & PCMCIA

I have the hostap driver working with my Dlink-520 pci card. It should work without any configuration for most, but the Dlink 520 card i have is the E1 version which is a Prism 2.5 chipset, but contains no firmware. The firmware is usually installed to the hd with the packaged CD that installs the driver, then downloaded to the card when it is brought up. I added some prism firmware to the ZoneCD in /etc/firmware which i download into the card by using the pre.sh file to run "/usr/sbin/hostap_fw_load wlan0". The hostap_fw_load script has been preconfigured to load the firmware for the Dlink 520 (E1 hardware version). It can be tweaked with a little more shell scripting or by remastering the iso. This script is only needed when your pci card has no firmware...

Other than that, the next ZoneCD release will automatically detect a Prism chipset in a PCMCIA or PCI device and automatically load the hostap driver and configure the ZoneCD to use the wlan0 device, not eth1.

BTW - I am going to see Slayer, Mastodon, and Killswitch Engage at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia tonight... so this may be my last post :-O

HostAP, USB drives, and eth1/wlan0

These are some of the improvements going into .5-3 which will be released as .5-4 once it's done in beta.

HostAP is working for PCMCIA thanks to help from WebToker. We were able to get his laptop to automatically detect and configure his pcmcia card using the hostap driver. I compiled a new iso that boots right up and his laptop is a ZoneCD-AP. Pretty Cool!

USB Drive support will be available in the next release. All you guys that have been asking me for the last six months can stop now... I gave in and did it. You can forget about the floppy drive and use a usb thumb drive to save your config.

Eth1 will now have an option to change the IP address. You will also be able to change the DHCP server IP (duh) and the range of IP's that are handed to clients. There will be a copy of dhcpd.conf saved on the floppy/usb device in zonecd/conf. You can edit this file to make dhcpd work how you want... also the option for changing the IP address of Eth1 will not have a dialog, you will need to edit the zonecd.conf file.

ZoneCD 0.5-2 in Limbo

I don't know what's going on with Sourceforge. Seems like the mirrors have broke. To get the latest release please use this temp mirror....

Orlando, FL. USA
http://zonecd.freewifizone.com/ZoneCD_0.5-2.iso
http://zonecd.freewifizone.com/ZoneCD_0.5-2.iso.md5sum.txt

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Notes: *THIS IS A BUGFIX RELEASE* All existing users that do not require an email address as a username for their login validation should update to this release. If a user registers a username with a long integer accounting fails because SOAP::Lite typecast to an int, when the webservice is expecting a long. All GUI users should upgrade to this version. XFCE4 was upgraded to 4.0.5 to fix a memory leak found in all XFCE4 versions < 4.0.3.

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Changes: Upgraded XFCE4 to 4.0.5; Fixed "Stuck in Open Mode" bug; Fixed Integer(Long) username bug;


If anybody else has a fat pipe and something to prove, please let me know. Maybe we can will eliminate the need for Sourceforge.

ZoneCD 0.5-2 Done

This is a bugfix release for one big bug and a couple smaller ones... Unfortunately, the ISO grew by about 30MB.

CHANGES
Upgraded XFCE4 to 4.0.5
Fixed "Stuck in Open Mode" bug
Fixed Integer(Long) username bug

ZoneCD 0.5-2 will be available on SourceForge Wednesday.

When in Rome...

...use PUBLICip! Thanks to a user Paolo S., Public IP now has an Italian translation for the login pages. If you are interested in doing a translation please contact me...