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I'm new to this too, and I'm wondering if I'm missing something fundamental. So here is a very basic question:
Is it possible to log onto open networks like at my local pizza shop or Borders book store without knowing the details of how their wireless access point is configured and/or editing configuration files on my hard drive?
This document describes how to set up Slackware Linux 8.0 using DHCP (Dynamic ... If you are connecting using ResNet, Internet Access Ports or Wireless, ... www.it.ubc.ca/internet/resnet/setupdocs/dhcpslackware.html - 23k - Cached - Similar pages Wireless
And what you see there is Santa Clause in comparison.
Thanks to you, I now know of a very simple way of setting up wireless however no where was this info made apparent. No where on LQ.org or anywhere else. Everything had to be installed from scratch and this was only a few short months ago.
I'm tempted to try your way of doing things, but I got the script written now and for none encryption purposes it's fine. Not arguing that your method of doing it is right or wrong... just completely unknown to me due to 10,000 reasons.
That google search did indeed return nothing useful ;-)
I just realized that I will have to write a proper README_WIRELESS.TXT for inclusion in the next slackware-current tree when Pat goes public again.
Your google-search results are reasons enough for writing that...
I am glad you did not take my rant as a display of arrogance. It was meant as positive feedback. Please have a look at some of the articles on wireless here: http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...ware:slackware - they did not show up in your search.
If you guys don't mind me chiming in here -- I really appreciate your discussion (I was kind of hoping that this would happen so I could learn more about what's going on under the hood when Slackware starts...). At this point I am wondering whether my difficulties in getting access to different wireless networks might be issues with a not-yet-fully-mature driver. I was using the iwl3845 driver and have just switched to the ipw3945 driver (thanks for the slackbuild Eric!) and so far things seem much more straightforward. The problems have been not seeming to be able to find one setup or routine that would work consistently in all cases, even though the Slackware config files should be simple to set up properly. I'll continue testing on various wireless access points today.
Were it not my only link to the web, I'd love to see if Eric's method would work for me. I cannot seem to find the CONFIG_4KSTACK in my .config file (on the web you'll find it and for a 2.6.21.5 kernel, but not mine!) so I'm stuck with that complication which, I would have to say, would perhaps be the #1 reason why I made the jump from my Slackware 10.1 2.4.x kernel to Slackware 12.0 2.6.x series. Had I only know about that "hack" I would not have took the chance on Slackware w/o Gnome... and where would I be today...?
I simply LOVE my Slackware 12.0 / Dropline Gnome, even over a Mac and that's saying something.
There is something about doing it yourself that gives you so much more of a *connected* feeling, albeit to your machine. Now if I could only figure out how to compile a kernel for the girlfriend....
I cannot seem to find the CONFIG_4KSTACK in my .config file (on the web you'll find it and for a 2.6.21.5 kernel, but not mine!)
Hi Perry
The "CONFIG_4KSTACK" is indeed not found in the kernel config, and this is the reason why an ndiswrapper compilation complains.
However, this is not at all a problem. The default for the kernel is to use 8K stacksize, and "CONFIG_4KSTACK" is by default never present in the .config. You can enable "#CONFIG_4KSTACK is not set" in the advanced kernel features and this will silence the compilation of ndiswrapper, but this is basically a pointless exercise for the kernel's configuration. Really the ndiswrapper should check the stack size in a different way.
To summarize: your stock Slackware kernels are completely fine, and ndiswrapper does an incorrect check for stack size.
Update:
Using the ipw3945 driver seems to have solved my problem. In the /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf file I use the minimal settings, including my home WEP key. And then when open up X I use wifi-radar to switch to other networks if I happen to be elsewhere. No problems. No need to reedit the conf file or restart /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 or reload the driver. And best of all the little wireless LED also works. Now that that's fixed I'll start messing around with wpa_supplicant...
#
# Eric: First I tried just the parameters you suggested, then I just cut & pasted
# what you had there. Even did a "ifconfig wlan0 up" nothing happened!
# (out of everything I've read, it looked the most promising!)
#
IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]=""
WLAN_ESSID[4]="any"
WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
Eric:
i didn't do a reboot however, i thought a simple rc.inet1 stop/start would be fine. as i need to do this in order to manually toggle the wireless due to it's nature. previously i had a netgear wireless router that sometimes went down about every five minutes, my new linksys router (i have a linksys router and a linksys wireless adaptor) is up pretty much all day (but does manage to get jammed at least once a day).
- perry
Code:
# /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf
#
# This file contains the configuration settings for network interfaces.
# If USE_DHCP[interface] is set to "yes", this overrides any other settings.
# If you don't have an interface, leave the settings null ("").
# You can configure network interfaces other than eth0,eth1... by setting
# IFNAME[interface] to the interface's name. If IFNAME[interface] is unset
# or empty, it is assumed you're configuring eth<interface>.
# Several other parameters are available, the end of this file contains a
# comprehensive set of examples.
# =============================================================================
# Config information for eth0:
IPADDR[0]=""
NETMASK[0]=""
USE_DHCP[0]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[0]=""
# Config information for eth1:
IPADDR[1]=""
NETMASK[1]=""
USE_DHCP[1]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""
# Config information for eth2:
IPADDR[2]=""
NETMASK[2]=""
USE_DHCP[2]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[2]=""
# Config information for eth3:
IPADDR[3]=""
NETMASK[3]=""
USE_DHCP[3]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[3]=""
# Default gateway IP address:
GATEWAY=""
# Change this to "yes" for debugging output to stdout. Unfortunately,
# /sbin/hotplug seems to disable stdout so you'll only see debugging output
# when rc.inet1 is called directly.
DEBUG_ETH_UP="no"
#
# Eric: First I tried just the parameters you suggested, then I just cut & pasted
# what you had there. Even did a "ifconfig wlan0 up" nothing happened!
# (out of everything I've read, it looked the most promising!)
#
IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]=""
WLAN_ESSID[4]="any"
WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
## Example config information for wlan0. Uncomment the lines you need and fill
## in your info. (You may not need all of these for your wireless network)
#IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
#IPADDR[4]=""
#NETMASK[4]=""
#USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]="icculus-wireless"
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes"
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]=""
#WLAN_ESSID[4]=BARRIER05
#WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
##WLAN_RATE[4]="54M auto"
##WLAN_CHANNEL[4]="auto"
##WLAN_KEY[4]="D5AD1F04ACF048EC2D0B1C80C7"
##WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=7B1ABEEB5D197741923ED26727569C365E31212096A0EAFAD563B268BAD01CAF TxRate=0"
#WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"
#WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="ndiswrapper"
## Some examples of additional network parameters that you can use.
## Config information for wlan0:
#IFNAME[4]="wlan0" # Use a different interface name nstead of
# the default 'eth4'
#HWADDR[4]="00:01:23:45:67:89" # Overrule the card's hardware MAC address
#MTU[4]="" # The default MTU is 1500, but you might need
# 1360 when you use NAT'ed IPSec traffic.
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes" # If you dont want /etc/resolv.conf overwritten
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes" # If you don't want ntp.conf overwritten
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes" # If you don't want the DHCP server to change
# your default gateway
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]="" # Request a specific IP address from the DHCP
# server
#WLAN_ESSID[4]=DARKSTAR # Here, you can override _any_ parameter
# defined in rc.wireless.conf, by prepending
# 'WLAN_' to the parameter's name. Useful for
# those with multiple wireless interfaces.
#WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=thekey TxRate=0"
# Some drivers require a private ioctl to be
# set through the iwpriv command. If more than
# one is required, you can place them in the
# IWPRIV parameter (space-separated, see the
# example).
Does "ifconfig -a" still show a "wlan0" interface? Now that you no longer use your own script, you would have to add a line of "/sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper" to for instance the end of the file "/etc/rc.d/rc.modules" or else your wireless card won't get activated.
RE: #1 -- I'd rather avoid using kwifimanager, since I find KDE apps a bit clunky. But that's an aesthetic judgment, not a functional one. I have been using wifi-radar and the results have been unreliable.
The March 2005 issue of Linux Magazine has a nice introductory article (link is to the PDF) about Kwifimanager. It's a small app that sits in the tray and lets you configure up to 10 acess points. Kwifimanager can also automatically connect to any up AP if you want.
Quote:
I'd rather wait a bit before ripping open my new laptop and sticking a used piece of hardware in it, though I am not averse to that in general.
Makes sense if your card is not simply accessed thought an easy to open door. Price quote was for a new card. Bluetooth is also very cheap and (again depending on the laptop) easy to install.
Quote:
The problem has been that I find myself having to re-edit too many config files, and restart too many services too often, and I was just looking for a more trimmed down way.
Check out the article above and decide for yourself if kwifimanager will do the job for you.
Does "ifconfig -a" still show a "wlan0" interface? Now that you no longer use your own script, you would have to add a line of "/sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper" to for instance the end of the file "/etc/rc.d/rc.modules" or else your wireless card won't get activated.
What does "iwconfig -a" tell you?
Eric
Code:
root@slackware:/home/perry# ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:09:84:96:1B
BROADCAST 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)
Interrupt:18 Base address:0xaf00
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:72 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:72 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3600 (3.5 KiB) TX bytes:3600 (3.5 KiB)
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:17:81:B2:64
inet addr:192.168.1.100 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::212:17ff:fe81:b264/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:12488 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8291 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:14326514 (13.6 MiB) TX bytes:658594 (643.1 KiB)
root@slackware:/home/perry# iwconfig -a
-a No such device
dennisk,
Thanks for the further info on kwifimanager. I'll check it out. It seems that the problem had less to do with the particular tools I was using, than it did with the driver. Since I switched to the ipw3945 driver I can easily get connected. For some reason the iwl3945driver from intellinux must have been the reason I couldn't get reliable connections without multiple redits and restarts of config files scripts. Hopefully the ipw3945 driver will follow the earlier ipw2100 and 2200 into the kernel.
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Thanks!
Actually...
Now that that's fixed I'll start messing around with wpa_supplicant...
