laptop can access samba server via ethernet cable but not wireless?
 

I have a Medion laptop and an homebuilt AMD desktop PC. I have Redhat linux 9 on both the laptop and desktop pc and both of them dual boot with Windows XP. I have both machines connected to a Netgear MR314 wireless router which is connected to a cable modem. The laptop has an ethernet port as well as a wireless 802.11b pcmcia card. I am able to access the internet from both the laptop (via ethernet cable or wireless card) and the desktop pc (via ethernet cable to the router). If I am using an ethernet cable connection between the laptop and the router, I can access the samba shares on the desktop pc. If I connect the laptop to the router via wireless card, I cannot access the samba shares. I cant figure this out. I have shorewall installed on the samba server (desktop pc) because the lokkit iptables firewall that came with redhat did not have an option to allow smb connections. I thought that the network communication from the laptop to the samba server should appear identical to the samba server wether thru ethernet cable or wireless card. I cant figure out why one configuration is allowed to connect and the other refused. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks

Hey there,
check the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
if it doesn't exist, create it and write in
DEVICE=wlan0
USERCTL=yes
ONBOOT=no
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
chmod 777 it, to be sure
and then /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart.
Linux can be an arsehole to get working right with wireless devices - it took me several days searching groups and sites until i found the right solution that allowed me to sambamount other machines and be mounted by them.
If this doesn't work check what other parameters you can provide to BOOTPROTO. The usual hack for wireless is to alias eth0 for wlan0 and then configure the GUI separately for web access,
please tell me if this helps
munnki

i dunno if this applies, but in slackware 9 i had to entirely disable the ethernet card to get the wireless working... they both went to the same gateway, but it wanted to go through eth0 even though wlan0 was up and running and eth0's wire was disconnected, thus no traffic... it was either don't configure eth0 or just remove the card...

if it's an integrated card, either keep the module from loading or disable the adapter in BIOS (just like removing it)

I managed to get it running with the Windows XP laptop client. I am now able to connect to the Redhat SMB server in the desktop pc. It was an ip address conflict, with my router issuing the same address to the laptop as was the static address of the amd system. I adjusted the pool of addresses for the router dhcp to start at 192.168.1.5 and I can now access my samba shares and print to the printer on the amd machine If I am running Windows XP on the laptop. I still am left with the problem of not being able to print from the redhat laptop client to the printer on the amd machine running redhat 9. I can now access the samba shares using smbmount but cant get printing to work. Local printing (amd machine to the locally connected printer ) works. Remote printing keeps asking me for a password and username which I enter correctly but still cant print. Any ideas? It cant be a shorewall issue or a smb issue on the server as it works when Win 'XP is the client. Gotta be something wrong in my local laptop config.

I finally got the printing part up and running. For some reason, I couldnt get it to work via printconf. I tried localhost:631 and configured the printer that way and it just worked.

Thanks for your info and advice.