Creating Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks on Linux Boxes

jmhal · 01-18-2008, 01:48 PM

Hi,

I have two Linux Boxes, one with Slackware 12 and other with Ubuntu 7.10. The Ubuntu machine has an USB wifi stick, model DWL-G132, working nice with ndiswrapper. The Slackware 12 machine is a notebook with Intel 2200BG wireless. They both work with access points without bugs.

I want to create a Ad-Hoc network using these two machines. On the Slackware machine, i'm performing the following commands:

Code:

# iwconfig eth1 mode Ad-Hoc
# iwconfig eth1 essid pulse
# iwconfig eth1 channel 8 
# ifconfig eth1 10.0.0.1 up

On the Ubuntu box, i'm using these commands:

Code:

sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/25NetworkManager stop
sudo iwconfig wlan0 mode Ad-Hoc
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid pulse
sudo iwconfig wlan0 channel 8
sudo iwconfig wlan0 10.0.0.2 up

I can't ping 10.0.0.2 from 10.0.0.1 and the other way around neither. There are no other interfaces or networks set on the machines. The other services aren't available either. Am I missing any step?

finegan · 01-20-2008, 09:19 PM

Yeah that "should" work, sadly ad-hoc mode has become the neglected step-child of the 802.11 service modes. Can you post back the output from "iwconfig" and "ifconfig", most important being the cell ID from iwconfig. Its formated like a mac address, and if the network were properly established on the 802.11 layer 2, they would match between the two interfaces.

Cheers,

Finegan

jmhal · 01-21-2008, 10:35 AM

Ok, I'll check that ID. But the steps i'm taking are ok? Any command missing?

finegan · 01-21-2008, 06:46 PM

Yeah, I mean, I was doing sort of the same thing a week ago, nat'ing from an ad-hoc network to my evdo card, and those were the commands I used. Some drivers support ad-hoc better than others. I'm almost certain your ipw2200 card will do ad-hoc just fine, its the ndiswrapper'd one I would think may be sketchy.

If the Cell ID's don't match, that's certainly the problem though.

Cheers,

Finegan