>>> OK, thank you Norman. The reason I'm trying to switch (this is my >>> third serious attempt) is some kind of a bug that crashes the system >>> when SMP is enabled and the madwifi driver is in master mode. I've >>> been running without SMP, but I could really use the extra power. >> >> That's interesting. I had an old 4 x processor machine running as an >> access-point (madwifi or madwifi-ng) running in master mode for at least a >> year or two. It was unstable as heck, and I never attributed it to this. It >> would, however, stay up for days or weeks at a time. >> >> Maybe this bug has crept in more recently? I'm not sure that it will apply >> to my new system (on which I'd like to run an AP, as soon as I get round to >> it) as that is a single processor P4. >> >>> Do you know if there is better Gentoo support for this on the horizon? >> >> I did find the dev uberlord immensely helpful when I was first doing this. >> He was the baselayout guy at the time, although I don't know if he still is >> or if you might be able to get hold of him. >> >> IMO the first thing to do is get the AP up & running without resort to the >> Gentoo init.d scripts. Try allocating an IP address to wlan0 just using >> `ifconfig` as root. If that works then you know the hardware & principles of >> operation are all ok. >> >> Stroller. >> >> > I would recomment the same thing. Play around manualy. Find out what works > and what does not. And if you found a manual way, you can start > scriptworkarounds and automating things.
Thanks everyone. This system is critical so I think I'm better off sticking with madwifi and no SMP for now. I just upgraded to 2.6.29 so I thought things might be ready. Which software component should I be on the lookout for as far as Gentoo being ready to integrate smoothly with ath5k? baselayout? - Grant
