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Author Topic: wifi on the olpc xo  (Read 5351 times)

Offline rbacher

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wifi on the olpc xo
« on: December 31, 2010, 12:42:12 PM »
I installed microcore (very basic) with jwm as the window manager, and it works great except for one thing -- I cannot connect to wifi that requires a password.  I am able to connect to an open access point with $ sudo iwconfig eth0 essid <name> so that much is working fine. But I need to connect to WPA-PSK wifi.  I tried to download wpa_supplicant following the instructions at http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/Setting+up+Wifi.  But when I run $ tce-load -wi wpa_supplicant.tcz I get an error message that says "No such file or directory." The file it is looking for is
"wireless-2.6.31_xo1-20100728.1841.1.olpc.a0a0edb7d8cbadb.tcz." Can anyone help? Thanks

Offline curaga

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2010, 01:22:26 PM »
I'm assuming you're running one of the XO remasters. How the wireless modules are arranged there we have no idea, but if they are not in a wireless-*.tcz extension, you can just remove that line from wpa-supplicant's .dep file.
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline rbacher

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2010, 01:58:38 PM »
I'm not sure if I am running an XO remaster or not. I set it up by using the [removed, see 6] plus some tinkering (hit and miss) on my own.  But, how can I remove the line you refer to from the wpa_supplicant .dep file? Where is the .dep file? Thanks
« Last Edit: January 05, 2011, 06:42:39 PM by ^thehatsrule^ »

Offline curaga

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2010, 02:43:09 PM »
The dep files are in your tce/optional directory. See /opt/.tce_dir for where the tce dir is.

The dep file is just text, use your favorite text editor to remove the line.
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline rbacher

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2010, 04:48:44 PM »
okay, I found the .dep files.  There was no .dep file for wpa_supplicant, so I wrote one with two lines:

openssl-0.9.8.tcz
wireless_tools.tcz

and saved it as /mnt/mmcblk0p1/tce/optional/wpa_supplicant.tcz.dep.  After that I was able to download and install wpa_supplicant.tcz (and it shows up in AppsAudit in On Boot Maintenance).  But... it's not running. If I run $ sudo find / -name wpa_supplicant, I get 3 files in the tce/optional directory (wpa_supplicant.tcz, wpa_supplicant.tcz.dep, and wpa_supplicant.tcz.md5.txt).  Any ideas?  Thanks for your help

Offline maro

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #5 on: December 31, 2010, 07:08:07 PM »
Judging from your reported results of the 'find' command I'd say that the extension was downloaded but not installed. I can't offer an explanation how that has happened, but your observation about 'appsaudit' might not help here much further. With the 'appsaudit' "OnBoot" -> "Maintenance" one gets to see two lists: on the left hand (llabeled "Select") a list of all .tcz files in the '.../tce/optional' directory and on the right hand (labeled "On Boot Items") all entries from the '.../tce/onboot.lst' file. I would imagine that 'wpa_supplicant.tcz' would at least show up on the left hand side, but that does not mean that it is installed.

To check if a entension 'EXT.tcz' is really installed I'd recommend to do two things: (a) check that a file or a link named 'EXT' exists in '/usr/local/tce.installed' (e.g. via ls -l '/usr/local/tce.installed/wpa_supplicant) and (b) check that a non-empty directory named EXT exists under '/tmp/tcloop' (e.g. via ls -l /tmp/tcloop/wpa_supplicant). Under normal circumstances both conditions should be fulfilled for any installed application, but I've run by now often enough into situations where that was not the case, so I consider it important to check both conditions and not just one of them.

If it turns out that the extension is not installed, I'd try to do so with tce-load -i wpa_supplicant (provided that '/opt/.tce_dir' points to the parent directory where the extension file is located).

Offline rbacher

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #6 on: December 31, 2010, 07:58:29 PM »
I agree that it's not installed (but why?). About appsaudit, it (wpa_supplicant) shows up on the right side (On Boot Items).  When I do steps (a) and (b) I get the exact same results (expected) but neither wireless_tools.tcz nor wpa_supplicant.tcz shows up in either directory. When I run tce-load -i wpa_supplicant, the result is "wireless-KERNEL.tcz not found!"  I get the same result when I run tce-load -i wireless_tools. I note that wireless.KERNEL.tcz is listed in the .dep file for wireless_tools.tcz in the Version 3.x Repository at http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/tcz_3x.html.  What is wireless.KERNEL.tcz? Thanks for trying to help me

Offline rbacher

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #7 on: December 31, 2010, 08:10:25 PM »
I got it. Not exactly sure what I did. Your suggestion to run tce-load -i EXT helped to solve the problem. I edited the .dep files to remove wireless_KERNEL.tcz, then ran tce-load -i wireless_tools, and that worked, then ran tce-load -i wpa_supplicant, and that also worked. Thanks for your help. Now I will work with wpa_supplicant to see if I can connect to a wifi with a password (which was the original objective)

Offline maro

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #8 on: December 31, 2010, 08:11:06 PM »
OK, at least we are getting somewhere. The problem you've run into is due to a "flaw" in the 'tce-load' script. And now quoting myself from an earierler thread:
Quote
... It [i.e. 'tce-load'] changes at download time the entries in the '.dep' files from 'KERNEL' to the actual value (e.g. '2.6.33.3-tinycore', which is the output of 'uname -r'). I personally believe that downloaded files should not be "fudged". I also believe that you should keep all downloaded file names intact. But you could then "mimic that flaw" of 'tce-load' by "fudging" the entries in the '.dep' files in the same way. You should then be able to use 'tce-load -i EXT' with the expected result.

So just change in all .dep files the 'KERNEL' to the output of 'uname -r' and run the 'tce-load -i ...' again.


EDIT: Well, I must have hit the 'Save' button a few seconds too late, but you seem to have made some progress anyway ...
« Last Edit: December 31, 2010, 08:13:03 PM by maro »

Offline curaga

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #9 on: January 01, 2011, 04:21:28 AM »
@maro: that is unrelated here, seeing as the xo remaster doesn't have a wireless* extension. It would have failed with runtime replacement too.
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline rbacher

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Re: wifi on the olpc xo
« Reply #10 on: January 02, 2011, 03:13:07 PM »
I think I figured this out. The root of the problem was the wireless_tools dep file. It had wireless_KERNEL.tcz in it. When I did tce-load -wi wireless_tools.tcz, the process jammed up when it couldn't find wireless_xo1-20100728.1841.1.olpc.a0a0edb7d8cbadb.tcz. The xo1-20100728.1841.1.olpca0a0edb7d8cbadb is the kernel name. I ran uname -r and that's the result I got. I think I have some kind of unusual set up that allows Tinycore (microcore in my case) to run on an OLPC XO computer. So now (I think) I understand the cause. The solution I discovered before understanding the cause -- simply delete the problem line from the wireless dep file (it's the only line so you end up with nothing in the file). Then I was able to tce-load -wi wireless_tools.tcz, and after that was able to get wpa_supplicant.

The next surprise, though, was that wpa_supplicant wouldn't work per the instructions. The wpa_passphrase worked fine, and I wrote the config.conf file with the long psk number I got from passphrase, but wpa_supplicant didn't run right. I got several error messages.

I gave up on trying to connect from the command line and installed wicd. Of course what I learned about getting wireless_tools and wpa_supplicant installed on an XO was necessary, as it turns out, since they are both needed for wicd. My boot time now, with microcore + chromium browser + wicd is still under 40 sec, so I think I got what I need at this point. Again, thanks for helping me.