Saturday, February 11, 2006

Step-by-step instructions

This is how I got "Airport Extreme" to work under Ubuntu (Dapper Flight CD 3) on my 12" Powerbook G4 (867MHz), from 2003.

First, install Ubuntu Dapper (note - it's development software and should not be used on a production system). Installation guides are available at Ubuntu Forums and through google.

Secondly, make sure you have a copy of the AppleAirPort2 driver. I've got mine from the Mac OS X partition still lying around on the hard disk drive, you would want to have a look at "AppleAirport2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirPort2" in "/System/Library/Extensions/", or at the Apple web site if you've got a working cable connection to your Powerbook (Update: see instructions for downloading and extracting the driver).

This is how I got it (my OS X partition is hda4):
sudo mkdir /media/OSX
sudo mount -t hfsplus /dev/hda4 /media/OSX/
sudo cp /media/OSX/System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirport2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirPort2 ./

Once you've got your hands on the driver, copy it to your linux system and extract the firmware for your network card with fwcutter.

Eg by doing this:

wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib/b/bcm43xx-fwcutter/bcm43xx-fwcutter:20060108-3_powerpc.deb
sudo dpkg -i bcm43xx-fwcutter_20060108-3_powerpc.deb
bcm43xx-fwcutter AppleAirPort2

Without network connection you would of course have to get the file from another computer, and move it over with a CD-RW or USB stick.

Now, copy the extracted files to /lib/firmware/. Bring down the cable interface, if up, and add a DNS to /etc/resolv.conf if you haven't done that before. Now it's time to bring up the wireless network card, eth0 on my computer.

sudo ifconfig eth0 up
sudo iwconfig eth0 channel 6
sudo iwconfig eth0 rate 11M
sudo iwconfig eth0 essid NetworkName
sudo iwconfig eth0 key s:AsciiWepKey
sudo route add default gw 192.168.0.100

Replace "NetworkName" and "AsciiWepKey" with your information. You won't need the "s:" prefix on the WEP key if it's in HEX.

Now, good luck and happy surfing. I'm going out for a walk in the sunny winter landscape of Gothenburg, Sweden.

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