Enabling Wireless Networking on BackTrack 4 RC2
 

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Here is how I successfully enabled wireless networking on BackTrack 4 RC2:

In the Shell Konsole, I ran
then pressed the right arrow key for Config, and in the Configuring preferences, I ignored the first two options (Use Static IPs, Use Static DNS). I choose the third option (Use DHCP Hostname), changed the DHCP Hostname (which was "bt", to something I made up) and selected "Automatically connect to this network". I entered the router's passphrase (Preshared Key) and F10 to save! Thanks Peacedog!
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Original question:
Hi,

I am new to Linux, but have managed to successfully instal Back Track 4 RC2 on one primary partition on my desktop's harddrive, with Windows XP Pro on the other primary partition. Man, I am loving being able to select which OS to boot with, and Linux in general.

I have a Nexxt Solutions 54m wireless PCI adapter (RTL8185L, nw122nxt12) installed which works great on the Windows side. I've configured it to automatically connect to my internet when it is in range. Our landlord's router is set as a gateway, providing internet access to all of the apartments in my building.

However, I was unsuccessful in getting networking to work on the BackTrack side with the dhclient eth0 command (please see below). I've searched Google, this forum and the backtrack forums but have not found the solution to my problem as yet. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Update: After I took out the wireless card to record it name and serial number, I replace it and rebooted into windows and noticed it stopped working. There was no wireless icon in the system tray and the LEDs did not light up. I powereddown the PC again, reseated the wireless card and tried again - no change. I am not sure why my wireless card stopped working. Any ideas why?

Hi 01010011, welcome to LQ. It would be an odd coincidence that the card has stopped working, but it does happen. Have you tried toggling the wifi switch?

On the Linux side, just issuing dhclient isn't likely to work unless you've already associated the card with the access point. Did you start networking? I believe Backtrack has networking turned off by default.

To associate with an access point you can use the cli tools iwconfig or WICD from the gui.

Good luck. ;-)

Try running lspci and searching the output to find out what is kind of chip is inside your wireless card--that's more important than the brand name/model.

Here's how my chip appears in lspci:

If lspci doesn't turn it up, try running dmesg; it is not restricted to pci devices. It produces much lengthier output.

Post the results here.

Thanks very much for your helpful reply Peacedog and the commands to start networking.

After I reseated the wireless adapter card and reinstalled the drivers, it wireless card's power and activity LEDs bagan to work, it saw my network and tried to connect, but displayed the limited connectivity message along with the yellow exclamation mark.

Anyway, when I restarted, I got this message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe. Please re-install a copy of the above file. I am not sure whether I should just get rid of BT4RC2 or what

Thanks a lot. I will do that as soon as I fix this missing ntoskrnl.exe mess

Update:

I restarted windows again, and it booted successfully without the "missing ntoskrnl.exe" error message. I guess all of this is happening because I installed a RC2? However, I am still getting the "Limited or no connectivity" error message. My other computer is connected to the internet just fine.

Update 2: Ok, I finally got my internet connectivity back on the Windows side. The router was not assigning my computer a valid DHCP IP address. Anyway that is resolved now. Now I can resume with enabling networking on BT side.

Update 3: On the BT side i ran the following successfully:

/etc/init.d/networking start
update-rc.d networking defaults

However I got this message when running /etc/init.d/NetworkManager start (No such file or directory)

What happens if you issue the following:

Good luck. ;-)

Thanks for your reply, here are the result:
Edit 1:
Ok, so I see my wireless network card:

Edit 2:
I ran iwconfig:

Edit 3:
This is what I got:

Okay, it looks like you're using the cli instead of the gui. Wicd is a gui client. It also looks like the card is up. What does the following produce?

Good luck. ;-)

Hi,

I got this result:

Let's go back to the start and see if we can get all of the information in one place to analyze since you had the possible hardware issue and this is a Broadcom chip, so you may have to install the proper modules and firmware. Please post the output from the following:

Good luck. ;-)

Ok, here are the results: (sorry I was not able to display the following code properly because I got this silly message: You have included 7 images in your message. .)

Peacedog, here is the rest of the results (sorry I had to break this up into two posts but I kept getting the above mentioned error)

[CODE]
root@bt:~# iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:1E:E5:51:BB:82
Channel:6
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality=18/100 Signal level=18/100
Encryption key on
ESSID:"MyNetworkName"
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Mode:Master
Extra:tsf=0000001fe0a57753
Extra: Last beacon: 743ms ago
IE: Unknown: 00086D61727368616C6C
IE: Unknown: 010882848B962430486C
IE: Unknown: 030106
IE: Unknown: 2A0104
IE: Unknown: 2F0104
IE: Unknown: 32040C121860
IE:

Unknown DD7E0050F204104A0001101044000101103B00010310470010138140001DD211B29FFFC67E816B4BFB102100074C696E6B73 797310230006526F7574657210240007575254353447321042000C4353563031483233383239371054000800060050F20400 0110110011576972656C6573732D4720526F75746572100800020088
IE: Unknown: DD090010180200F4000000
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
root@bt:~# [\CODE]

Okay, let's try this. Please post the output from the following:

Good luck. ;-)

Hmm, nothing seamed to happen, although the cursor stopped blinking

I'm still not seeing what I'm looking for. Let's just look at all of the loaded modules.

Good luck. ;-)

Peacedog, thanks a lot for your patience, I really appreciate this. I've been researching every command you have given me so far and I must admit its a bit of a steep learning curve but its fun.

Here are the results: