wl500gp and atheros

[newgen]

I have a asus wl500gp v1 and installed a atheros minipci in the router.
Openwrt + madwifi cannot bridge wlan traffic to lan without patching.
I cannot find any document, how to install madwifi driver unter gargoyle.
The openwrt madwifi kernel module is build for kernel 2.4.34, while gargoyle uses 2.4.35. It is therefore incompatible and not installable via opkg.

Any help?

[Eric]

You'll need to do a custom build. The brcm images include the brcm wireless driver, not madwifi, which is what you need.

On a linux system, download the source from the SVN. Then run "make custom". When the menuconfig comes up (identical to what you see in OpenWrt), configure it to include Gargoyle (under Administration), and then configure it to not include brcm wifi, but to include madwifi, hostapd and wpa_supplicant. After you are done configuring this, it should build the images you want.

[newgen]

Thanks for the quick response. Did what you suggested.
Madwifi works. Will just have to test, if wireless bridging works. Thanks for the help.

[newgen]

Well, it does NOT work. Only up to the point where openwrt worked.

Configuration:
PC: eth0: 192.168.3.4
via lan connected to
wl500gp: br-lan: 192.168.3.2
via wlan connected to
laptop(ap mode): ath0: 192.168.3.1

PC can ping wl500gp. wl500gp can ping laptop.
PC CANNOT ping Laptop.

brctl show:
br-lan eth0.0
ath1
(shouldn't it be eth0 instead of eth0.0 ?)
(ath1 is the wlan device)

I have tried ip_forward = 1 on wl500gp. no success.
I have tried adding a route on the pc:
route add -host 192.168.3.1 gw 192.168.3.2 eth0
no success.

I am out of ideas. I thought gargoyle was able to bridge properly between lan and wlan, while openwrt was not.

Need more help.

Edit:
wireshark on laptop tells me that he recieves "Malformed Packet" when I ping from pc to laptop. It could simply be a wireless packet with unknown protokoll to wireshark, but I am not sure.

[Eric]

Sorry... I should have noticed that you wanted this as a bridge from your first post.

You can't use madwifi as a bridge (unless you use WDS) on the brcm build, since it doesn't have the right kernel version. Right now the patch that enables wireless bridging with madwifi only works with one very specific version of the kernel. Bridging is not working on x86 routers either for this reason -- just the atheros routers like the FON and the DIR300.

[newgen]

Thank you for your help. It's laughable that bridging on the old linksys wrt54g works like charm, but on the new wl500gp with madwifi it does not.

I think that Atheros (with madwifi module) + wl500gp makes a very cool combination. But missing this functionality makes it almost worthless for me.

I will try it with the firmware I used on the wrt54g, but I think it had also a braodcom chipset. Searching for a "very specific kernel" with a "very specific patch" is not worth my time. I spend days finding out that this combination seems now almost impossible. I think I will buy an eee pc + a madwifi compatible card and bridge on debian unstable.

Thank you for your help and my regards for your firmware.