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Hack 61 Hermes AP

Enable BSS master mode on Hermes-based
radios.

Hermes-based radio cards (like the
tremendously popular but confusingly named
Lucent/Orinoco/Avaya/Proxim silver and gold cards) are notoriously
difficult to operate in BSS [Hack #12]
master mode. By design, the cards themselves are actually not able to
provide BSS master services on their own. You might find this
surprising, since they are the radio card embedded in the original
AirPort AP, as well as the RG1000, RG1100, AP1000, and many others.
Before these cards can operate as a BSS master, they need additional
firmware uploaded to the card. This tertiary
firmware is uploaded to the card's RAM,
and is lost if the card loses power. To make matters even more
difficult, the firmware in question is licensed software, and
can't legally be distributed by anyone but the
manufacturer.

The ingenious Hermes AP project (http://hunz.org/hermesapl) addresses both
of these tricky issues. It consists of a set of modified drivers, a
utility for uploading the tertiary firmware, and a simple script that
downloads the firmware from Proxim's public FTP
server. Hermes AP isn't trivial to get running, but
can be the perfect piece of software if you absolutely need a
host-based Orinoco AP.

To get Hermes AP running, you need a kernel with Dev FS enabled. This
allows the kernel to manage the /dev directory,
dynamically creating device files for every physical device that the
kernel supports. Run a make
menuconfig, and select Code maturity
level options Prompt for development
and/or incomplete code/drivers. Now go back to the main
menu, and under File systems enable
/dev file system support, as well as
Automatically mount at boot. When running Dev
FS, it's also a good idea to disable
/dev/pts file system support, as Dev FS will automatically
manage your ptys for you.

Before you recompile your kernel, copy all of the source code under
the drivers/ directory from Hermes AP over top
of the existing drivers in the kernel (right over top of the files in
linux/drivers/net/wireless/). Now build your
kernel and modules as you normally would, and reboot.

Your Orinoco card should come up as usual with the new driver, but
won't support BSS Master mode yet. First,
cd to the Hermes AP source directory. To download
a copy of the tertiary firmware from Proxim's site,
run the hfwget.sh script in the
firmware/ directory. Next, build the
hfwload utility by running
make in the hfw/ directory.
This utility uploads the tertiary firmware to your card. Copy the
utility and the card firmware somewhere handy (I keep mine in
/usr/local/hermesap) and run a command like this
at boot time, before the interface comes up:

# cd /usr/local/hermesap; ./hfwload eth1 T1085800.hfw

Note that the card must not be configured as up when you load the
firmware; if it is already up, an ifconfig eth1
down will bring it down for you. If all goes well, an
iwconfig should show that
eth1 is in Master mode! You can now configure
the radio with an ESSID, WEP keys, and any other features as you
normally would.

Hermes AP is still beta software, but it seems to run quite well.
Personally, I still prefer Host AP and a good Senao/EnGenius card to
Hermes AP (as the radio cards are more powerful and sensitive, and
Host AP is under active development and sports more fun features) but
for some situations, Hermes AP can be ideal.