Installing MadWifi 'By Hand'

Prerequisites

First, you should make sure you have everything you need in your kernel. Chances are that, if you are running the stock debian kernel, everything will be OK. A description of the necessary kernel options can be found on our kernel configuration page. You'll need to be running at least Sarge in order to have working WEP and iwpriv.

# apt-get install subversion wireless-tools

Now, make sure you have the sources for your current kernel installed:

# apt-get install kernel-source-{your-kernel-version}

Or for Debian testing/unstable:-

# apt-get install linux-source-{your-kernel-version}

NOTE: Problems can occur when running Debian 3.1 (Sarge) using kernel 2.6.8-2-386. Installing the kernel sources and compiling MadWifi against them may result into errors like "ath_pci disagrees about version of symbol struct_module" or -- more generally -- modprobe reports an "Invalid module format" when trying to load the module. In that case, you should install the appropriate kernel headers instead of the kernel source:

# apt-get install kernel-headers-2.6.8-2-386

If your wireless card is a PC Card (Cardbus), then you’ll need to make sure you have card services installed:

# apt-get install pcmcia-cs

For linux kernels >=2.6.13-rc1:

# apt-get install pcmciautils

Note: Madwifi cards are never, ever PCMCIA, they are always cardbus. Therefore there is no need to edit any of the files under /etc/pcmcia

Instructions

Please refer to the First Timers HowTo for a complete guide about building MadWifi from source, and initial configuration of the device.

---