How do I configure WPA for my wireless in Etch

Tons of Fun · 03-08-2008, 03:01 PM

I just installed Debian Etch on my Gateway 7330GZ laptop via the net install. I am floored at how well the install went (on a laptop). The install even picked up my built-in Broadcom BCM4306 wireless card. I used my wired network to do the install because it didn't provide the option of using WPA-PSK, and my wireless network uses that. After the install, I went to the network manager, selected eth0 (my wireless), and enabled it. It is still only giving me the option for WEP.

I have verified that wpasupplicant is installed. So how do I install and/or configure my wireless to use WPA? I have searched through Google, and apparently in Etch ndiswrapper is no longer supported? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

hkoster1 · 03-08-2008, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tons of Fun

I just installed Debian Etch on my Gateway 7330GZ laptop via the net install. I am floored at how well the install went (on a laptop). The install even picked up my built-in Broadcom BCM4306 wireless card. I used my wired network to do the install because it didn't provide the option of using WPA-PSK, and my wireless network uses that. After the install, I went to the network manager, selected eth0 (my wireless), and enabled it. It is still only giving me the option for WEP.

I have verified that wpasupplicant is installed. So how do I install and/or configure my wireless to use WPA? I have searched through Google, and apparently in Etch ndiswrapper is no longer supported? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mmm... are you sure that eth0 is your wireless interface? Sounds more like the wired interface you used for installing Etch, no?
Does the command (as root) "iwconfig" show any wireless interfaces? Probably not, eh?

So, about ndiswrapper have a look at some Howto I made at http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=17719. About wpa_supplicant, good of you to have installed that. Network-manager, which is part of the standard install of Etch, knows how to utilize it to make a connection. At any rate, getting this to work is a minor issue once you have ndiswrapper running. Let us know if you have got that far and still have problems.

Tons of Fun · 03-08-2008, 04:58 PM

Actually, I was mistaken. eth0 is given to my firewire port, eth1 my wireless, and eth2 my NIC. Still seems odd to me, especially eth1 as the wireless. I was expecting wlan0 or something similar. Below is the results of iwconfig:

Case:/home/hank# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth2 no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"" Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
Mode:Managed Access Point: Invalid
RTS thr

ff Fragment thr

ff
Encryption key

ff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.

Case:/home/hank#

Either way, I will follow your link and let you know how it goes. Thanks for the reply.

hkoster1 · 03-08-2008, 05:22 PM

OK, seems one of the b43 or b43legacy drivers is in Etch and is picking up on your wireless Broadcom device. If network-manager doesn't bring it up, then you could try and add something like the following to your /etc/network/interfaces file:

Code:

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
    wpa-ssid NetworkName
    wpa-psk "WPAPassPhrase"
    wpa-driver wext

and then try and bring up the eth1 interface the first time (as root) with the "ifup eth1" command (or try "ifdown eth1" first). Could also try the ipw driver.

I haven't seen any reports of this being successful, though, so you may have to go the ndiswrapper route. In that case use the interface that ndiswrapper gives you, probably wlan0, and definitely use the wext driver.

Have fun!

Tons of Fun · 03-08-2008, 06:26 PM

YESSS! It worked. I tried using ndiswrapper, but the broadcom drivers were in .exe format. I installed them on an XP machine and extracted the 2 .inf files. I tried both with ndiswrapper, but got a bad driver error. Then I tried iwlist scan per your last reply, and I saw my network. So, I configured my sources.list with your recommendation, brought it up with ifup, and the wifi light came on. I checked ifconfig, and saw that it had an ip address, unplugged the CAT-5, rebooted the machine to make sure it comes up ok on it's own, and now I am replying with my wireless connection.

Thank you very much for the help. Like I said in the beginning of this post, I am really surprised how well this install went. I first tried Sarge on an old Fujitsu laptop, and it took almost a month to work all of the bugs out. I started this one a few hours ago, and it is now fully up and operational.

Now it's time to show my Windows friends a Linux laptop. Two of them have the same laptop, a Gateway 7330GZ, so the speed tests will be interesting.

hkoster1 · 03-09-2008, 01:54 AM

Great that you got it working!
Just out of curiosity, which kernel are you using in your Etch (check with the "uname -r" command), and which b43xx(?) module (check with the "lsmod |more" command)?

Tons of Fun · 03-09-2008, 09:40 AM

The kernel is 2.6.18-6-686 on a Gateway 7330GZ laptop with an Intel P4 proc. The Broadcom module is bcm43xx.

hkoster1 · 03-09-2008, 10:00 AM

Thanks for the info. Some more recent broadcom 43xx devices don't work well with the bcm43xx module... so there ndiswrapper must be used. You may keep that in the back of your mind, should you experience problems.

I notice that you have a laptop, so you may be interested in another Howto of mine at http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=17199, describing use of the roaming mode of wpa_supplicant. It was written for another wireless chipset, but can easily be adapted to your case. Something to do on a rainy afternoon...

Have fun!

Tons of Fun · 03-09-2008, 03:48 PM

Great, thanks. This was going to be my next challenge.