I decided to start learning Linux in detail this winter break as my CE major will probably require me to have some sort of knowledge about the OS. I decided to set up a simple home networking server as my first project as that will probably give me some good networking/hardware experience.

I successfully installed Slackware 12 and I'm using KDE. The problem I'm running into is with my wireless USB adapter (Linksys WUSB54ag). I don't need help with getting that working - I installed ndiswrapper, and the adapter can successfully scan and recognize networks with the KWifiManager. However, I'm having trouble actually connecting to a network. I set up all the aspects of my home network (SSID, WEP key etc) in the control center, but I can only connect to the network in ad hoc mode.

I'm not sure, but I think the problem is that my computer is not being assigned an IP address by the router. Is there a way to enable DHCP? Or might I possibly be able to assign a static IP (it would probably be something like 192.168.1.49)? Or could there be a problem with using a WEP key?

In addition, when I run iwconfig, the wlan0 entry comes up, but it does not have the same information stored as in the Control Center (for instance, the SSID says "any" and not "Dolhanet" as it does in the CC).

To sum up my problem, why does my computer only connect in ad hoc mode in the KWifiManager and how might I be able to fix it?

Thanks,
Brian Dolhansky

EDIT:

Sorry if anyone took the time to investigate this, but I eventually got it working. I simply needed to play around with iwconfig, and I found the dhcpcd command in order to pull an IP address from my router.

To add to your thread, in Slackware you can/should setup your internet connection in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf -- you might find useful instructions on Eric Hameleer's Wiki pages. Drop to the bottom and see what is advised for your particular chipset. If you issue "lsusb" in a terminal as root, you can probably see what chipset your card uses. Most of them have native drivers you can use as an OSS alternative to using Ndiswrapper.

WEP is very unsecure, and WPA is easy to setup.