How do I set up my wireless (forsomeone who knows NOTHING about modules etc.)

Oholiab · 03-28-2005, 05:56 AM

Ok, I've got Slack 10.1 with 2.6.11 kernel. I have an 802.11 b/g wireless (acer IPN 2220).
I know there's other threads on this, but I need to know where to go FROM SCRATCH, andI'd also like to know why we are making each step, and what we are achieving by doing so. I'm guessing you'll be wanting to see some conig files first, so which ones, and why?

Thank you in advance for being so wonderfully knowledgeable and helpful!

hyapadi · 03-28-2005, 06:19 AM

Hm.. I also can't find tutorial/howto about wireless settting. If there is tutorial about this, it would be very great. Somebody, can help? Hehe. It would be greatly appriciated. :>.
There are a lot of posts about this topic. but none of it give a clear steps to be done from the beginning.
Correct me if I'm wrong

Thanks

Oholiab · 03-28-2005, 06:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by hyapadi
Hm.. I also can't find tutorial/howto about wireless settting. If there is tutorial about this, it would be very great. Somebody, can help? Hehe. It would be greatly appriciated. :>.
There are a lot of posts about this topic. but none of it give a clear steps to be done from the beginning.
Correct me if I'm wrong

Thanks

Amen to that!

XavierP · 03-28-2005, 06:53 AM

monkeyking · 03-28-2005, 07:29 AM

Ok I can tell you what I did.

There wasn't any linux drivers for my wireless(rtl8180), so I had to go for the ndiswrapper solution.
Ndiswrapper is driver that makes you able to use winxp drivers.

1. get the latest winXP drivers and put themsomwhere you can find them.
2. Go to the ndiswrapper homepage. http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
3. Download a version of your choice, they recommend taking the most recent. But for some reason my card only works with 0.7, so In your case I would try the latest, and if that is not working, try 0.7 hehe. (BTW DON'T GO WITH THE PRECOMPILED NDISWRAPPER, THE TRICK IS COMPILING YOURSELF)
4. make sure you got the correct kernel src. like this

Code:

uname -r

This writes what kernel you are using.

Code:

ln -s /usr/src/linux-<kernel-version> /lib/modules/VERSION/build

If not go download the correct one.
5. compile and install ndiswrapper like this (you should be root)

Code:

make
make install

6. If everything went ok we can now set it up.
Start by disabling all the security shit on your access point(just untill it works the, then enable it again).

Code:

ndiswrapper -i /pathToWereYouSavedYourXpDrivers.inf

This tells ndiswrapper what driver you. Remember it should be your inf file

Code:

modprobe ndiswrapper

This loads the ndiswrapper module into the kernel.

Code:

dmesg|grep wlan0

This command you use to check if it has been loaded. It should telle you the name of driver if it works.

Code:

ifconfig wlan0 up

This activates your card.

Code:

ifconfig

now you can see that it is working.

Code:

dhcpcd wlan0

This enables your internet (routing of external ip ranges)

Code:

ifconfig

Check your nice ip address.
Congratulation it is working.
If you want the card to work on every reboot. Add this to /etc/rc.d/rc.local/

Code:

modprobe ndiswrapper
ifconfig wlan0 up
dhcpcd wlan0

That's it.
If your want to enable the security you should use iwconfig [ssid|encKey].

Oholiab · 03-28-2005, 12:36 PM

when I try make, I get the following error message:

make -C driver
make[1]: Entering directory `/c/Documents and Settings/Matthew/My Documents/My Downloads/ndiswrapper-1.1/driver'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.11/build SUBDIRS=/c/Documents and Settings/Matthew/My Documents/My Downloads/ndiswrapper-1.1/driver \
NDISWRAPPER_VERSION=1.1 \
EXTRA_VERSION= modules
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.11'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.11'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/c/Documents and Settings/Matthew/My Documents/My Downloads/ndiswrapper-1.1/driver'
make: *** [all] Error 2

What do I do? The previous two steps worked... Although I had to download the kernel source package cos I forgot to do so before.

jong357 · 03-28-2005, 02:35 PM

Don't build on a FAT32 partition... Thats semi-silly.... You'll end up with permission problems along with white-space problems.. eg 'Documents and Settings'...

Try it again from a linux partition. Unpack the tarball in /root/work or something. I'm not saying that will fix your problem tho. Just a wise idea...

Did you install the kernel-modules-2.6.11 package as well? Was the kernel source from Slackware or kernel.org?

Oholiab · 03-28-2005, 03:18 PM

I got all the modules from ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.sla.../linux-2.6.11/

I'll have a go at installing from the Linux partition.

Oholiab · 03-28-2005, 04:42 PM

OK, I'm as far as all the wlan0 stuff, except I've been using eth0 and eth1 instead, as they seem to produce some coherent results.I get the following for the dmesg and ifconfig for both as follows:

eth0: VIA Rhine II at 0xc0006800, 00:0a:e4:a2:9f:53, IRQ 10.
eth0: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x7849 advertising 05e1 Link 0000.
eth0: link down
eth0: link down
eth0: link down
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
eth0: link down
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
eth0: link down
eth0: no IPv6 routers present

eth1394: $Rev: 1224 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
eth1394: eth1: IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet (fw-host0)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0A:E4:A2:9F:53
inet6 addr: fe80::20a:e4ff:fea2:9f53/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:33 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:9182 (8.9 Kb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xe800

eth1 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-0A-E4-04-52-10-23-A9-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1216 (1.1 Kb) TX bytes:1216 (1.1 Kb)

One of them (I can't remember which now...) gives me a blinking cursor without a prompt when I try and run dhcpcd, which I hve to ^C out of, and the other just goes straight to another prompt as if its completed the program, but the ifconfig is exactly the same and the internet does not work. A few questions:
1) Which (if either) of these am I supposed to be calling my wireless card?
2) If neither, how do I find out the correct device?
3) How do I get it working from here... I've had success puntil this point.

Thank you all for your helpso far... you were right, I needed to install from the Linux partition!

monkeyking · 03-28-2005, 06:38 PM

ok can you elaborate on "getting coherent stuff"
As far as I know the ndiswrapper can only produce wlanINT's.

Did you do a

Code:

dmesg|grep wlan0

And did you get feedback like

Code:

wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0e:2e:24:42:26 using driver rtl8180.sys

If so then you should use wlan0

From your output of dmesg, I would say that ndiswrapper hasn't been loaded to work with either eth0/eth1

BTW
I think your eth1 is your firewire.
Cause, you know IEEE-1394 is firewire.

Code:

eth1394: eth1: IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet (fw-host0)

Somehow your firewire is setup to do some network magic.

Oholiab · 03-29-2005, 05:44 AM

By coherent stuff I ment the code I pasted above...

I'll try it with wlan1, as I have a normal ethernet card as well which isn't plugged into anything which may be wlan0

Thanks again for yor time and patience!

monkeyking · 03-29-2005, 06:52 AM

NO, a normal non wireless network card is called.
eth0,eth1,eth2,.............
A wireless network card on the other hand is called.
wlan0,wlan1,wlan2,wlan3,wlan4,................

So post your output of

Code:

dmesg|grep wlan0

And

Code:

dmesg|grep wlan1

Oholiab · 03-29-2005, 10:00 AM

OK, wlan0 has decided to work now... and I think I've found our problem on line three of the dmesg|grep:

Code:

wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0e:9b:8d:43:aa using driver neti2220, configuration file 17FE:2220:1468:0305.5.conf
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP, WPA with TKIP, WPA with AES/CCMP
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present

dhcpcd still causes bash to... well... stop.

Oholiab · 03-29-2005, 02:25 PM

bump

Sorry... I really want the net on Linux so I can get everything else working without continually rebooting into XP!

mcd · 03-29-2005, 07:33 PM

try this:

su
(password)
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 stop
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia stop
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia start
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 start
ifconfig

post any errors you get, as well as the output of ifconfig. you DO need to use dhcp right? not a static ip? have you configured it (hint: check out /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf)?