I have been trying to connect an XP laptop (this will become a linux laptop soon) to my Mandrake 9.2 desktop using IEEE 802.11b WIFI cards - XP was preinstalled on the (brand new) laptop and the only change I have made there is to resize the xp partition to make way for Mandrake 10 so I am hoping/assuming it will not be the problem... anyway...
I installed an ADMTek 8211 wifi card in the desktop - the 8211 module compiled but shows

code:
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in
/lib/modules/2.4.22-10mdk/kernel/drivers/net/8211.o


at bootup. I can insmod -f the module and when I do iwconfig I get

code:
eth2
IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"" Nickname:""
Mode:Managed Channel:0 Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=0kb/s Tx-Power=47 dBm Sensitivity:0/65535
Retry limit:3 RTS thr=2346 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


prior to issuing any iwconfig command parameters so my WIFI card is eth2 - ifconfig eth2 gives the correct MAC address which I read off the card before installation.
The first few times I tried to get things rolling I used Kwifimanager to set the ESSID and activate an AD-HOC configuration (note the desktop is running and config is activated now so from what little I know ?the desktop is the psuedo-server in the ad-hoc relationship?). I have now also tried console iwconfig parameters to set the same and the results are identical.
What I see from XP is that it picks up the ESSID "t3st" I have assigned on the desktop machine and the signal strength is "Excellent" (the machines are 1 meter apart while I work this out). I have disabled any encryption on both machines just to see if I can ping.
My network set up is as follows - I use shorewall 1.4 on the desktop connected to a Motorola Surfboard Cable Modem. My ISP (blueyonder UK) assigns eth1 its IP dynamically but eth0 is static at 192.168.1.1 and I can ping to/from other machines with IPs in the 192.168.1.* range (I have another machine that connects fine hence masquerading and firewall rules are OK for that part of the network).
So I set eth2 with an IP of 192.168.0.1 and the laptop wireless connection (in the noddy windows bit) as 192.168.0.2 both have the mask of 255.255.255.0. I got this info from the two-interface quick setup howto on the shorewall site. I have added the extra interface in /etc/shorewall/interfaces and the masquerading line in /etc/shorewall/masq (http://www.shorewall.net/two-interface.htm#id2865626)
The problem is I cannot ping 192.168.0.2 (my laptop - I can ping this address on this machine) from the desktop (192.168.0.1 - I can ping this address on this machine) I get "request timed out" from windows and "destination host unreachable" from the desktop.
When installing Mandrake 10 rc1 on the laptop, no wireless device could be found - hence the windows usage to try to fix the desktop side of things first.
Machinery is...
desktop: AMD 1100mhz, ECS K7V5A, ADMTek 8211 wifi
laptop: Acer Aspire 1705smi, Acer invilink wifi.
output from ifconfig -a:
Many thanks for any help.

It is good that you have both eth0 and eth1 on different networks.

Each interface that you use must be on a different network and have
a gateway IP address assigned for each interface on it's own network.

I would concentrate on editing the configuration files for each interface
they will be at
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
and have names ifcfg-<interface name>

You can look at ifup-wireless in the same directory to see what wireless parameters you can set.

You can use ifup <interface name> and ifdown <interface name>
to try to bring up and bring down interfaces.

Also you can do
/etc/init.d/network stop
/etc/init.d/network start
to stop and start networking

I would recommend working exclusively from the command line to try to get things working.

Hope this is helpful, will give more tips later on.

Nothing odd in any of the ifconfig-ethn scripts that I can see.
One thing I have noticed in /var/log/messages is a constant stream of...
repeated over and over - I assume this is me not having set the channel by iwconfig?
Can anyone give me a quick start guide to the iwconfig parameters I would need to test an ad-hoc connection? I can read up and apply my own security after that but I just wanna eliminate hardware config problems.
Many Thanks

Look at /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless for wireless parameters that can be set.

channel setting is set with CHANNEL

be sure to set GATEWAY settting to IP address of gateway/router on local network.