Wireless card not detected

Ian J · 07-11-2008, 06:09 AM

Hi everyone, I am a newbie to Slax and linux in general athough i have played around with Suse a bit in the past.

I d/l and installed th latest Slax version 12.1 yesterday, everything working nicely as far as i can see except wireless. I have an on board card with my IBM T30 plus a PCMCIA plug in job (Both Atheros Chipsets)

I know very little about coding but am keen to learn (My only previous experience of programming was on a Commodore Plus 4) many years ago now and mostly forgotton.

Could anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get it working please.

Ian J

Andersonian · 07-11-2008, 06:35 AM

As far as I know, Atheros chipsets have fairly good supports.
What do you mean when you say the card is not detected? What have you tried?

Try downloading the wpa_supplicant binary (or package) and running it.
My card will act dead until I run

Code:

sudo wpa_supplicant -i eth0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

and the config file is very simple:

Code:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
update_config=0

network={
ssid="SomeWiFiNet"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=NONE
ca_cert="/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt"
}

Ian J · 07-11-2008, 06:50 AM

Hi Andersonian, thank you for your reply, all i have tried is setting it up via wireless kwifi manager and i get msgbox unable to auto detect wreless interface.

Have found the package you suggest but will it work as wireless access point is only running WEP due to daughters laptop being a bit old now.
Ian J

Ian J · 07-11-2008, 02:04 PM

Update, i downloaded the WPA supplicant only to find it was already inculded in the distro, never mind, tried to install it from PKGtool and kept getting msg not a tgz file, even though i could clearly see it was labled as such.

Next i tried installing the one i had downloaded and another msg saying missing destination after name of file or something similar.

As it was already on Hda4 which is my root drive i assumed it would just install to that drive.

Not to be outdone i d/l the installpkg package and did install that ok, great, went to edit the mirror section yet another msg. access denied.

By this time i was losing my temper so to save my laptop from ending up being thrown across the garden i gave up.

Where am i going wrong? its driving me nuts.

Ian J

BobNutfield · 07-11-2008, 02:11 PM

could be wrong, but I believe that if you are only using WEP encryption, you don't need WPA supplicant. run:

Quote:

ifconfig

as root, of course. See if any wireless extentions show up.

Bob

EDIT: Atheros is well supported with MADWIFI. Check their site and there are a number of posts in this forum.

BCarey · 07-11-2008, 03:00 PM

First off, SLAX is not Slackware, so there's no guarantee, but...

For atheros chipsets you need madwifi. Slackbuilds.org has madwifi slackbuilds that you can use to build what you need, and then you install with installpkg. Bob is right that you don't need wpa_supplicant if you are only using WEP. OTOH, "ifconfig" will only show up and running interfaces, "ifconfig -a" will show them whether or not they are up. "iwconfig" is the CL program for messing around with your wireless interface, but kwifimanager should be adequate if you don't want to use the CLI.

Brian

Ian J · 07-11-2008, 03:09 PM

BobNutfield Thanks for your reply, that's what i thought but being a newbie i didn't want to cast doubt on someone else's advice.

BCarey
Thanks also for your reply, it is the Slackware distro i am using, i just used the word Slax for short although i didn't realise there was any diference.

I did try ifconfig but it shows no running wifi cards. It is obviously something in the configuration i have missed or something i haven't installed but i have no idea what that could be, and as for installing,--=---

Ian

BCarey · 07-11-2008, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian J

BobNutfield Thanks for your reply, that's what i thought but being a newbie i didn't want to cast doubt on someone else's advice.

BCarey
Thanks also for your reply, it is the Slackware distro i am using, i just used the word Slax for short although i didn't realise there was any diference.

I did try ifconfig but it shows no running wifi cards. It is obviously something in the configuration i have missed or something i haven't installed but i have no idea what that could be, and as for installing,--=---

Ian

It is because you have not installed madwifi. Get what you need at slackbuilds.org, build and install the packages, and your wifi card will appear.

It sounds like you've never done this before, so to give you some additional help:

Download from slackbuilds.org the slackbuild, eg. package.tar.gz. Extract the files with the command "tar xvf package.tar.gz". Into the directory created by the extraction, download the source (there is a link from the slackbuilds.org page). Go into that directory, su to root, and do "sh package.SlackBuild". This will compile the program and create a slackware package in /tmp. Then, still as root, do "installpkg package.version.tgz". There are more detailed instructions on the site, but this is basically it. It's pretty simple, really.

BTW, Slax is the name of a "live CD" distro based on Slackware. Glad to hear you are using the real thing.

Brian

Brian

Ian J · 07-11-2008, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BCarey

It is because you have not installed madwifi. Get what you need at slackbuilds.org, build and install the packages, and your wifi card will appear.

It sounds like you've never done this before, so to give you some additional help:

Download from slackbuilds.org the slackbuild, eg. package.tar.gz. Extract the files with the command "tar xvf package.tar.gz". Into the directory created by the extraction, download the source (there is a link from the slackbuilds.org page). Go into that directory, su to root, and do "sh package.SlackBuild". This will compile the program and create a slackware package in /tmp. Then, still as root, do "installpkg package.version.tgz". There are more detailed instructions on the site, but this is basically it. It's pretty simple, really.

BTW, Slax is the name of a "live CD" distro based on Slackware. Glad to hear you are using the real thing.

Brian

Brian

Brian, thank you once again, yes you are quite right, i haven't ever done this before.

Presumably where you written tar xvf package.tar.gz i assume i would need to substitute the word package with the package name eg. madwifi etc.

Sorry to be a bit dense but this is all totally new to me but i do want to learn how to do things like this.

Do i need to place the package into any particular folder before i extract it or will the place i downloaded it to do.

I have located the source on the slackbuilds page but why isn't it already included in the driver package so it can be installed all in one go, or is that not possible.

One final question, su to root, could you please explain what that means, don't forget, you are talking to a complete learner.

Still, i did manage to install the distro and do the partitioning, edit lilo etc. so at least i got something right.

Ian

BCarey · 07-11-2008, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian J

Brian, thank you once again, yes you are quite right, i haven't ever done this before.

Presumably where you written tar xvf package.tar.gz i assume i would need to substitute the word package with the package name eg. madwifi etc.

You are correct. Assuming you are doing the driver package, you would type "tar xvf madwifi-driver.tar.gz"

Quote:

Sorry to be a bit dense but this is all totally new to me but i do want to learn how to do things like this
.

No problem, we are all still learning and are merely in different stages of noobiness.

Quote:

Do i need to place the package into any particular folder before i extract it or will the place i downloaded it to do.

It doesn't matter in getting it to work, but if you want to keep your system clean and easy to manage, you should think about organization at the beginning. I have a "builds" sub-directory where I do all of this kind of stuff.

Quote:

I have located the source on the slackbuilds page but why isn't it already included in the driver package so it can be installed all in one go, or is that not possible.

It is certainly possible, but I think the idea is that slackbuilds.org is responsible for the slackbuild, and not for the source, so they want you to get the source from, well, umm, the source, so to speak.

Quote:

One final question, su to root, could you please explain what that means, don't forget, you are talking to a complete learner.

If you followed the instructions, you should have created a "normal" user, which means a user without adminstrator (root) privileges. To do some things you will need to switch to the root user, and you do this with the command "su", after which you will be prompted for the root password.

Quote:

Still, i did manage to install the distro and do the partitioning, edit lilo etc. so at least i got something right.

Ian

Ian J · 07-12-2008, 05:38 AM

Brian
Once again, thank you for all your help, it is really appreciated.

I have downloaded the madwifi package and extracted it, i have also downloaded the source but not sure if i should extract it first before putting into the madwifi driver directory.
The only other thing i am unclear about is when i type commands to build the package do i need to put anything before the sh Package.slackbuild or is that the complete line of code.

Ian

bgeddy · 07-12-2008, 08:11 AM

Have a look at http://slackwiki.org/SlackBuild_Scripts
this is a page from the Slackware wiki - the site is full of useful information.

Also http://slackbuilds.org/howto/ from ths Slackbuilds site itself may help.

Basically the Slackbuild is a script which will extract the source code and build a Slackware package from it. You then install the package.

BCarey · 07-12-2008, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian J

Brian
Once again, thank you for all your help, it is really appreciated.

I have downloaded the madwifi package and extracted it, i have also downloaded the source but not sure if i should extract it first before putting into the madwifi driver directory.

No, you don't. The script will take care of extracting it.

Quote:

The only other thing i am unclear about is when i type commands to build the package do i need to put anything before the sh Package.slackbuild or is that the complete line of code.

Ian

"sh" is a command to execute a shell script. So no, you don't put anything before it. Also note that unix is case-sensitive, so Package.slackbuild <> Package.SlackBuild. You should also make sure you are in the directory with the SlackBuild and source when you issue the command. (Assuming that the SlackBuild is executable, an equivalent command would be "./Package.SlackBuild".)

Since a SlackBuild is simply a shell script, you can open it up in any text editor (or using "less" or "more") and see exactly what it is doing.

Brian

Ian J · 07-12-2008, 12:32 PM

Brian bgeddy and everyone else who has tried to help me.

He he, finally i have cracked it thanks to all your super advice, not installed yet but everything went well with building it.

Will let you know if it works ok.

Once again thank you very much.

Ian

PS. I am sure to be back at some stage with more questions so find a hiding place now.

Ian J · 07-12-2008, 01:56 PM

Brian,
I knew it wouldn't be long before i came back, tried to install and msg:- package does not end in tgz.

Do i take it from that msg that it shouldn't end in .tgz because it does!

I notice there is another folder in the temp directory that was created at the same time as i built the driver package it is labeled SBO and contains two files i don't suppose i should use one of those files instead.

Ian