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      1. Solaris Wireless FAQ
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      5. pcwl driver
      6. pcan driver
      7. rtw driver
      8. ath driver
      9. ral driver
      10. wpi driver
      11. cardbus driver
      12. malo driver
      13. iwk driver
      14. wificonfig
      15. wpa_supplicant
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      18. rum driver
      19. ndis wrapper
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Wireless Network Driver for the Agere/Prism-II 802.11b Chipsets (pcwl)

The current version is 0.1 which is based on GLDv2. Solaris 10 users need to user this version, while pcwl(GLDv3) version is integrated OpenSolaris build 60. With Crossbow integration, pcwl(GLDv3) version can be used with onnv105 and previous builds. On onnv105+ builds, please use the integrated driver directly.

This version doesn't support Prism2.5 pci card, while the gldv3 version in snv_60+ does support it.

This driver is partially based on the source code from FreeBSD, and is provided under the same BSD License.

Links

• SUNWpcwl package
• Source code

Requirements

Before downloading the source or installing the binaries, please make sure that your system meets the following requirements:

• Wireless card based on Agere 802.11b (e.g. Orinoco 11b) or Prism-II 802.11b (e.g., Netgear MA401) Chipset.The card has to be recognized by Solaris and reported as "pccard156,2" in prtconf(1M).
• Solaris 10 or Solaris Nevada build

How to use

The easiest way to install the driver is from pre-compiled binary package:

# wget http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/downloads/pcwl-0.1-pkg.tar.gz
# gzip -dc pcwl-0.1-pkg.tar.gz | tar xvf -
# pkgadd -d . SUNWpcwl

You should be able to plumb the interface right after installing this package without having to reboot first:

# ifconfig pcwl0 plumb

If plumbing failed, your card may be not supported or just not getting properly identified by the Solaris kernel. Send us a note and we'll try to help.

If you don't use WEP and want to connect to whatever WLAN available, then all that's left to do is starting dhcp:

# ifconfig pcwl0 dhcp

If your WLAN requires WEP authorization, then you need to download and install the wificonfig utility. After that, you'll need to create new profile for your WLAN with the following commands:

# wificonfig -i pcwl0 createprofile essid=ssid encryption=wep wepkey1=wepkey
# wificonfig -i pcwl0 connect ssid
# ifconfig pcwl0 dhcp

Go to wificonfig web page for more details.

Notes

This is work in progress. Please send your questions and comments laptop-discuss@opensolaris.org discussion forum.