Configuring Wifi in SUSE
 

Hi all! :)

I just installed SUSE 9.1 Personal Edition, which automatically recognized the fact that I had Belkin network adapter, but I had to change a few things in YaST. YaST created a file called \ect\sysconfig\ifcfg-wlan-bus-pcmcia, and this is what it has:

BOOTPROTO='dhcp'
MTU=''
REMOTE_IPADDR=''
STARTMODE='hotplug'
UNIQUE='svHJ.sVibLFZNRh9'
WIRELESS_AP=''
WIRELESS_BITRATE='auto'
WIRELESS_CHANNEL=''
WIRELESS_ESSID='SkyWire_HotSite'
WIRELESS_KEY=''
WIRELESS_MODE='Automatic'
WIRELESS_NICK=''
WIRELESS_NWID=''
WIRELESS_POWER='no'
_nm_name='bus-pci-0000:03:00.0'

SkyWire_HotSite is the SSID of the wireless network that is run throughout my apt. complex, thats how I get the Internet. It is unencrypted (so I suppose I would leave the key blank).

My card is a Belkin F5D6020. It has a green light that comes on when it seems to be working with the OS (which it does in XP) but has not come on at all in SUSE/Linux.

I installed the package kwifimanager (which on SourceForge says it was built for SUSE 8), but it didn't seem to help. It didn't recognize my card, nor could it Autodetect any interfaces, whatever *that* means.

Any ideas on getting it working?
Thanks!
Brock



:newbie:

What is working already?
Can you ping to the router or the internet already?
Do you have an IP address? -> The interface is the name you're using for your network configuration. wlan0 is probably your interface.

BTW there's a wireless forum under networking where you might get more help.

Thanks darkleaf!

I ran ifconfig (without parameters) and it only showed my "eth0" and "lo" interefaces. I guess YaST never set up "wlan0" or any other interfaces. (ah ha!)

I don't have an IP address, it set up for DHCP. My gateway is at 192.168.2.1. Under windows my PC doesn't have an ip until I connect with the access point but I always end up with the same IP address, 192.168.2.130, however. So, should I designate a static ip?

What should I do then? :confused:

On second thought, I'll move this thread to the wifi board...

Did you edit the configuration files to start with dhcp?

If you want to use dhcp the only thing you need to set is your essid (and if you have the wepkeys and other security) so your card can communicate with the proper access point. In the command line you can start dhcp with:

YaST probably already did, it said "Configured with DHCP" under it. I think my wireless ineterface is supposed to be sit0, it was listed under iwconfig but not ifconfig. So... I tried dhcpcd sit0, but I can't tell wether that did anything.

Is there a way to tell what drivers it's running under, or where could other config files be? Strangely, SUSE lists my card as "Belkin Ethernet controller" in YaST but I have no idea how it figured that out. When I select it and hit the Details button it says:

Type: Network Controller
Vendor: Belkin
Unique ID: svHj.sVibLFZNRh9

STATUS -- Avaliable: Yes Conifigured: No


Under another tab, "Resources", it says:

I/O Ports: 0x4000-0x40ff (rw, disabled)
Memory Range: 0x...(blah blah).. - 0x...(blah blah)..... (rw, non-prefecthable, disabled)
IRQ: 10 (12 events)


Thanks for you help!

If you can ping to your router it did ;)

x.x.x.x is your router's IP address.

It recognized your card because of hardware settings. Try:
It will show all the PCI stuff on your motherboard.

lspci was pretty revealing!

The line describing my card says:
0000:03:00/0 Ethernet controller: Belkin: Unknown device 6020 (rev 20)

So it doesn't even have a driver.

What is your Belkin card? FYI: iwconfig tells if card is installed, and ifconfig if the command ifup has a config file.

A Belkin f5d6020...

But anyway I was about to install ndiswrapper b/c i realized it wasnt configured but found out that SUSE Personal doesnt include "make"! Since then I switched to Fedora c2 and things have been working out.

that is one solution. You could have downloaded those packages from one of SuSE's ftp sites or comes out of box with SuSE pro