I recently succeeded in setting up the new Madwifi 802.11a Atheros
wireless network drivers on two different hardware configurations,
both running Suse 8.2 Professional. In order to help other people out
there who might be trying to do the same thing, I am posting the setup
steps here.

This information is current as of September 2003, and has been tested
with an SMC 802.11a wireless access point (SMC2755W), two SMC PCMCIA
cards (SMC2735W and SMC2335W) and one DLink PCI card (DWG-AB520).

Remember: the Madwifi driver is in active development and these
instructions may be out of date. Your mileage may vary.

- - -

OBTAIN AND COMPILE THE CODE

1. Obtain the drivers from the CVS repository (not the packaged
release) at the Madwifi project page on sourceforge.net.

2. Make sure the kernel-sources and sharutils Suse RPM packages are
installed, then install the Madwifi drivers using the instructions
provided in the Madwifi README file.

START AND CONFIGURE THE DRIVER

3. Install the card and enter the following commands:

ifconfig ath0 [ipaddress]
ifconfig ath0 netmask [netmask ipaddress]
ifconfig ath0 up
iwconfig ath0 txpower auto
iwconfig ath0 essid "[essid]"
iwconfig ath0 enc "s:[encryption key]"
route add default gw [gateway ipaddress]

Keep in mind this is with an Access Point (not ad-hoc mode), with
"open system" authentication (not "shared key"), with WEP enabled, and
without DHCP on the Access Point.

MAKE THE DRIVER AUTOLOAD AND AUTOCONFIGURE ON BOOT

4. Use YaST2 to configure the card -- this will create a new file in
/etc/sysconfig/network directory. In my case (and in the remaining
steps below) the file was called ifcfg-eth1.

5. In /etc/sysconfig/network, change the name of the above file from
ifcfg-eth1 to ifcfg-ath0, and add a few extra lines to the file so
that it looks like this:

BOOTPROTO='static'
MTU=''
REMOTE_IPADDR=''
STARTMODE='onboot'
UNIQUE='WL76.P_5DvIcEJG1'
WIRELESS='yes'
WIRELESS_MODE='Managed'
WIRELESS_ESSID='[essid here]'
WIRELESS_KEY='s:[ascii encryption key here]'
WIRELESS_IWCONFIG_OPTIONS='txpower auto'
WIRELESS_NICK=''
WIRELESS_NWID=''
BROADCAST='192.168.1.255'
IPADDR='192.168.1.30'
NETMASK='255.255.255.0'
NETWORK='192.168.1.0'

6. Edit /etc/modules.conf, changing the line

alias eth1 ath_hal

to

alias ath0 ath_hal

7. Run the following modprobe commands:

modprobe wlan
modprobe ath_hal
modprobe ath_pci

8. Reboot. Voila!

[the original version of this document was posted to the Madwifi
users' mailing list in late August, 2003]

Dave Owen