I've been setting up a home wireless network. I have managed to get my Win98 desktop and my WinMe laptop connected to our SMC 2404WBR router (which is connected to a cable modem).

The problem has been with my RedHat 8.0 Dell laptop and its associated Netgear MA401. After numerous frustrations and dead ends, I have finally (nearly) gotten the card working via the wlan-ng rpms.

The final problem I'm having deals with the network connection. When I insert the card (or boot up the machine), the laptop correctly senses the card and starts up wlan0. The router senses the card and assigns a DHCP address to it, which I can confirm by connecting to the router with one of the other networked computers. At this point, if I do nothing else, the laptop claims that no network connection is available. I can ping 127.0.0.1, but I cannot ping the router or the assigned DHCP address.
If I do a "route," only the loopback is listed

If I issue the commands:
>ifconfig wlan0 192.168.2.xxx up (using the assigned DHCP address)
>route add default gw 192.168.2.1 wlan0
everything conncts and I can see the outside world.

I am wondering what I need to do to avoid this manual setup, especially since I would need to look up the assigned IP address every time I start the laptop.

Any ideas?

Some possibly-useful info:
ifcfg-wlan0:
DEVICE=wlan0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=dhcp # change this to static to specify an IP addr
IPADDR=192.168.2.0
GATEWAY=192.168.2.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.2.0
BROADCAST=192.168.0.255
GATEWAYDEV=wlan0 # this is for setting default route
TYPE=Ethernet
USERCTL=yes
PEERDNS=yes # this lets DHCP define the DNS setup

from wlan-ng.opts (comment lines pruned as needed to save space)
WLAN_VERSION=0
WLAN_PATCHLEVEL=1
WLAN_SUBLEVEL=16
WLAN_EXTRAVERSION=-pre2

case "$ADDRESS" in
wlannoenable,*,*,*)
#=======ENABLE=======================
WLAN_ENABLE=n
;;
*,*,*,*)
#=======ENABLE=======================
WLAN_ENABLE=y

#=======USER MIB SETTINGS============
#USER_MIBS="p2CnfRoamingMode=1"

#=======WEP===========================================
lnxreq_hostWEPEncrypt=false # true|false
lnxreq_hostWEPDecrypt=false # true|false
dot11PrivacyInvoked=false # true|false
dot11WEPDefaultKeyID=0 # 0|1|2|3
dot11ExcludeUnencrypted=true # true|false
-

PRIV_GENERATOR=/sbin/nwepgen # nwepgen, Neesus compatible
PRIV_KEY128=false # keylength to generate
PRIV_GENSTR=""

dot11WEPDefaultKey0= # format: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx or
dot11WEPDefaultKey1= # dot11WEPDefaultKey2= # e.g. 01:20:03:40:05 or
dot11WEPDefaultKey3=

#=======SELECT STATION MODE===================
IS_ADHOC=n # y|n, y - adhoc, n - infrastructure

#=======INFRASTRUCTURE =======
AuthType="opensystem" # opensystem | sharedkey
DesiredSSID="any"

#=======ADHOC STATION START============
SSID="linux-wlan" # SSID
BCNINT=100 # Beacon interval (in Kus)
CHANNEL=6 # DS channel
BASICRATES="2 4" # Rates for mgmt&ctl frames
OPRATES="2 4 11 22" # Supported rates in BSS

;;
esac

Yesterday I completed installing RedHat 8.0 on a labtop and successfully configured a Netgear MA401 card. The secret: I followed the instructions at:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/27833

My card doesn't automatically activate the network when I plug it in, but I only have to click activate in the redhat-config-network.

I do receive the gateway info from the dhcp server though (I htink).

Andreas

Has anyone been able to get teh MA401 card to work with SUSE 8.0? I have not been able to find any inforamtion on how to make the card work. Mr. Wizard help would be appreciated.

thanks.

hello,

I was trying at the moment to install and have my ma401 card to work. I am not able to have my wlan0 to appear anywhere. I see a solid green light on my card but nothing works... Can you help me!

Francis

Don't use wlan. Use orinoco and follow the directions posted in the link above. It's exactly what I did to get my MA401 RA card to work in RH 8.0.

Also... in Linux, usually those lights don't mean much. It's just something else for the driver writer to deal with.

I think I must be dumb. I tried a couple of things they said but does not appear to work...

running RH9

I think that my system may be messed up now with all I tried. can you help me out.

Instead of rewiting everything finegan and I just wrote in another thread.. Go here.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=57555

Everything you need is going on right now in an active thread. Don't use wlan. Just follow the directions posted and everything should be ok.