Hey everyone,

Okay, so i have been using slack for a little bit (few months..2 tops?), anyway, i haven't had a whole lot of time to explore it, and there are two things that i miss from Kubuntu... the package manager, and Knetworkmanager.

So far i have Slapt-get to retrieve security updates and such (at least i think..but i am a noob so i don't know), the only problem with this is that i don't have an adequate wireless lan manager. I have tried Wifi-radar, Wlassistant, and i have tried to install network manager from source, but i just don't have the time to hunt for odds and ends.

My main point in writing this thread is to ask, What is the best, easiest, most simplistic, and reliable way of connecting to my wireless network in Slack 12?

Wifi-radar and Wlassistant were easy, but haven't been reliable, and only work like every 100 tries...

Sorry for rambling...this has been a problem haunting me for weeks...


-thanks Matt

First we need to assure u have your wifi card properly installed.

Are the wifi modules loaded?

Now we need to know what wifi card we are talking about,

because each driver offers a different way to access the wifi card.

I myself use the atheros madwifi driver,

so I had to run #iwconfig, in a terminal, to see what interfaces were created by the driver.

In my case, the D-link 520G, rev B, chipset atheros, the interface was ath0.


Then, to get the conection up, I did

#ifconfig ath0 up
#dhcpcd ath0 (if u are going to use dhcp)


Once I tried Wlassistant too, but it only worked on root.

Following on from erickFis' post we need to know what wireless card your laptop has. If you could login as root and send us the list that lspci produces it would help us make a start.

Simon

You don't need to be root to run lspci. Never login as root unless you really need to. And when you do, use and setup sudo.

Most think just cause it's not in your default path means you can't run it. Just simply add /sbin to your users PATH and you're golden on a lot of commands. Just keep in mind, you can run most that create output, any that allow changing of configurations will require root type access.

Hmm live and learn as they say my box is pretty generic and it won't let me run lspci as user without running /sbin/lspci and I didn't even know you could do sudo on Slack. Always something new to learn I guess, thanks

Do you really need my lspci?

My wireless card is a Linksys WMP54GS (bcmwl5 driver)

I installed the Firmware, and i am pretty sure it works because i can access the internet, and when i run "iwlist scanning" it shows my network, and the signal, etc... so i am 99% positive it is installed correctly... but please correct me if i am wrong.


-Matt

So what exactly is it that you need to do? I assume you have edited /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf for your network preferences?

From my own experience the fastest, easiest, and most reliable way of getting connected to various hotspots is the command line. I'm a trucker and travel all over the country. I tried a couple of the 'easy' wireless managers and none of them were as reliable as just using the command line.

If you have some hotspots you hit on a regular basis you can just write shell scripts for them for a quick and easy connect. That's what I do.

This may sound stupid...but what do you mean by add /sbin to users path?



and to masonm, I have not edited /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf...but i will give it a chance and get back to you.

trickykid meant something like this:

file ~/.bashrc
file ~/.bash_profile
This way /sbin is -- like all folders in your path before -- is searched for executables when you type in a command.

I don't know about your system, but /sbin is already in my path. As far as I know, it's a default. While having ~/.bashrc can allow you some really cool options and custom aliases, adding /sbin to a path statement in ~/.bashrc is unnecessarily redundant.

Now, since you have said you are using a Broadcom wireless adapter, might I suggest you check out these step-by-step instructions. I have used that process to set up Broadcom adapters on two different machines, and they both work fine.

Blessed be!
Pappy

On a stock Slackware install /sbin is in root user's $PATH, but not for a normal user -- this is what I have experienced since Slackware 9.1. Maybe you have a custom ~/.bashrc or /etc/profile?

make sure your hardware driver working , then
become root using su
run netconfig
run /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 start|stop|restart (choose between them ..)
(note : rc.inet1 is run automatically at boot time )
next step depends on your config , but the router
node needs to run pppd to dial up a connection

I stand corrected. I only use my root account (yes, I know, that's bad...so is breathing the air in Dallas on a hot summer day...), so I wouldn't know about deficiencies in the system for those who don't use their root account.

I did also set up ~/.bashrc, and it works well. I haven't touched /etc/profile, so I can't comment on what it will or won't do.

Thanks for the clarification.

Blessed be!
Pappy

[offtopic]

I think most of the danger of running things as root comes from the poor coding of many programs out there. For example, running wine as root is just pure madness. It causes problems even when run as regular user, luckily the effects wear off after reboot.

Isn't that driver highly experimental?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mzc3