Hi,
An utter noob here with some troubles getting wireless networking going on a brand new IBM thinkpad R40. I am running Slackware 9.1 (just installed yesterday) and have a Microsoft wireless card (MN-520) and one of their wireless base stations sharing a dsl connection with a winXP box. Anyone know of a walkthrough that might be of use. I've been searching and have only found one for RH. Can anyone give me a little help CLI style?

Here's what I've done:
added info on the card to /etc/pcmia (or whatever the configuration file is - I am now at work remembering what i did)

configured the network via netconfig with all the appropriate IP addresses from my WLAN
should I be doing this directly in iwconfig?
when I run plain old iwconfig I get "no wireless extensions" back

Sorry if this all sounds garbled....trying to talk the talk without having much walked the walk.

Any help?

geomatt

Sounds like the driver isn't loaded.
modprobe hermes
modprobe orinoco
modprobe orinoco_cs
Post any errors, otherwise continue on to configuring with iwconfig or edit /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts to enter the wireless parameters.

Looks like linux-wlan drivers will work:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz

The FAQ for them is here:

ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/FAQ

2Gnu,
I checked and those drivers are loaded. Still no go. Will try the linux-wlan next.
Thx for the help.

What a pain, I have to boot xp to read this and then writie it all down and boot linux to try it out. At least I find this stuff entertaining...hours of fun.

-geomatt

On second thought, the linux-wlan approach looks a little daunting, and from posts I've found searching around here I should be able to get the orinoco_cs driver to work.

I'm not entirely sure what I should be doing and where I should be looking for clues, so I'll mention the things I have done and you wise men and women out there will no doubt be able to point me in the right direction....

1. made sure the drivers were in place (lsmod lists the right ones)

2. inserted the network card into the pcmcia slot on reboot

3. saw a message scroll by indicating unsupported card but the in the next line showed the info on the mn-520 card (this was one of the numerous messages zipping past on bootup, but when I typed in dmesg at the command line I couldn't find it anywhere - isn't dmesg supposed to be the place to look for all of those boot time messages??)

4. typed ifconfig for info on network cards and got eth0 and lo with info on network cards that are not the mn-520 (I should explain I am working with a laptop with an internal ethernet card and the mini-pci wireless card built in - a centrino machine)

5. typed iwconfig and got the "no wireless extensions" message for both of those devices.

Does all of this mean that linux is just not finding the wirelss card? I get one beep and both lights on with no blinking on the card.

Any ideas?

There really is nothting daunting about the linux-wlan process. It is a simple ./configure, make, make install. I know you've said you are a noob but compiling your own packages really isn't that difficult, give it a shot. Ask questions if you are unsure. Here is the README from the package.

ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/README

It guides you right through an install. Why don't you give it a shot and post issues you have.

There is also and FAQ here:

http://linux.grmbl.be/wlan/

Since you are using Slackware it should be a snap. Slackware is a great distro for using source packages. Also, if you are using Slack be prepared to get into the command line and compile stuff.

Also, looks like iwconfig doesn't work with the linux-wlan software. It looks like they have their own tools.

geomatt,

I've had poor luck with the wlan_ng driver and, even though I'm not a complete noob, also found the process needlessly complicated. I concur that the orinoco_cs is your best bet.

The file that card services uses to match cards to the driver is /etc/pcmcia/hermes.conf. The version that I'm using contains an entry for your card:

card "Microsoft Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520 1.0.3"
version "Microsoft", "Wireless Notebook Adapter MN-520", "", "1.0.3"
bind "orinoco_cs

Can you verify that yours is the same? Try cardctl ident to see if it reports the same info (in case there's a version issue or something). What version of the driver are you using? 0.13e is current.

If you restart card services, do you get two high beeps? /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia restart

I'll try all of that stuff when I get home and let you know how I make out....
geomatt

OK.

I've got the network card running - I had a slight mistake in the syntax of the card desrciption in the /etc/pcmcia/config file (2gnu, there was no etc/pcmcia/hermes.config, but the config file did the trick once I used your exact syntax)

iwconfig now shows that the card is connected

Next step: getting the machine hooked up to the base station (another microsoft product - the MN-500 router).

any helpful hints? I am getting a bit tripped up by the network configuration routine.
geo

Glad you made it this far!

netconfig will walk you through the basic network setup.

After that, you'll probably need to restart the network to get it going.
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart

Hey 2gnu, it worked!!
I am on right now wireles style.
Thanks for all of your help.
-geomatt

WooHoo!!
Glad that it worked. You just got my day off to a great start.
Enjoy.

Glad you got things working. Sorry I was leading you down the wrong road. I must remember that the solution is usually something simple. Since I only use madwifi drivers I should simply stick to helping people out with those. Kind of ironic that you have a Microsoft branded wireless card working in Linux. Wonder what the folks in good old Redmond think. Back to the grind.

flyfishin,
Your approach was perfectly valid. Many folks use the wlan_ng drivers successfully. I fall into the "didn't work for me" camp, so always try to make a go of it with orinoco_cs first. Oddly, those drivers work fine for me with Knoppix and a Prism 2.5 card, so I know the fault lies on the other side of the keyboard.

flyfishin,
I sort of like the irony too. Thanks for the encouragement about compiling from source - I'll be doing that shortly....
Linux is way cool.
geomatt