WIFI

In the standard Archos firmware, the wifi device is handled by the driver sd8xxx.ko. It is loaded at boot as follows:

insmod /lib/modules/sd8xxx.ko mfgmode=0 helper_name="/usr/share/fw/helper_sd.bin" fw_name="/usr/share/fw/sd8686.bin"

I'm given to understand that Archos is not allowed to distribute this proprietary driver. However, if you know how to get to the HiddenPartition you can get the archos rootfs.cramfs.secure onto a Linux machine and mount it, and extract the necessary files from there.

When the driver is loaded it creates an eth0 device which can be configured using ifconfig and iwconfig in the usual way. If you're using WEP the following absolute minimal set of commands should give you a working wifi interface.

/sbin/iwconfig eth0 key [1] {my WEP key}
/sbin/iwconfig eth0 key open
/sbin/iwconfig eth0 essid {my ESSID}
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 {my_fixed_IP}
/sbin/route add default gw {my_gateway_ip}
echo nameserver {my_nameserver_ip} > /etc/resolv.conf

In practice you'll probably want this stuff properly configured by the tools in your Linux distribution. In which case, you should be aware that the sd8xxx driver is very fussy about the order in which iwconfig operations are carried out. For example, if you try to set the ESSID before you set the key, it will fail. So some fiddling with the configuration tools might be necessary.

Under Angstrom, network settings are held in /etc/network/interface, and managed by the gpe-conf utility. I have found that the gpe-conf utility is just too broken for practical use. But if the relevant settings are put into the file be hand _and in the right order_, then the utilities /sbin/ifup and /sbin/ifdown behave mostly as they should. In particular, you should get dynamic configuration via udhcpc. However, DHCP will only work if you've loaded the module af_packet

/sbin/modprobe af_packet