Wireless Networking on Toshiba M40X

Awatto · 07-07-2005, 09:21 PM

It's been a while since I've used linux so I'm a little rusty on stuff.

I just bought myself a Toshiba Satellite M40X with wireless Atheros Wireless LAN (802.11g) and I have never set up wireless networking on linux before, so here is my setup:

I have a SMC router, with wireless networking enabled, worked fine on the laptop on windows, so I formatted and put Slackware 10.1 on.

I did make, make install, and modprobe the MADWiFi driver.
Now I'm lost on how to activate my card/connect to my wireless network.

Here are some of my outputs, remember im new to this so I have probably forgotten to do something, if not many things, which you may think are quite obvious. I did however set the ESSID and Encryption Key and still had no luck.

Code:

root@limits:~# ifconfig
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)


root@limits:~# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

ath0      IEEE 802.11  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412GHz  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
          Bit Rate:0kb/s   Tx-Power:50 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0/94  Signal level:-95 dBm  Noise level:-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

eth0      no wireless extensions.

The ath0 is new since I installed the drivers.

aaa · 07-08-2005, 03:24 PM

To use card:

ifconfig ath0 up
iwconfig ath0 essid your_essid
iwconfig ath0 key "s:your_wep_key" # if u r using wep

Now wait for the card to associate (your ap's mac address should appear under "Acces Point"). Then run "dhclient ath0".

Awatto · 07-08-2005, 11:54 PM

Thanks for the reply.

Everything except the "dhclient ath0" worked great. When I executed that last command it came up with an error (something about ath0 not existing). I did a "dhcpcd ath0" and now everything is working though. Thanks again!

yukieiri · 07-12-2005, 12:38 PM

Hmm, I've had some problems with my atheros card too (same laptop) , im a bit of a noob to linux. If i have it switched on at bootup it crashes X (running suse 9.3 btw), but if i switch the card on during a standard KDE session, It 'sees' my network but will not connect to it. Any ideas?