Slackware manual Wireless Setup
 

This is how I manually start my wireless card & connect to the internet in Slackware

Go to terminal. Make yourself root, if you aren't already.

# su root

Then enter:

# ifconfig

See What the results are. Mine look like this:

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:480 (480.0 b) TX bytes:480 (480.0 b)

Notice only my loopback process is currently working.

Type this command to turn on your card, if your wlan is already up skip to the next command.

# ifconfig wlan0 up

Then check it:

# ifconfig
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:480 (480.0 b) TX bytes:480 (480.0 b)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:A8:F5:33:E9
inet addr:192.168.2.16 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:7059 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:7061 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:6087692 (5.8 Mb) TX bytes:1457569 (1.3 Mb)

This shows the card is up but not connected to a network. I then type a command to look for available networks. I store the results in a file so I can browse through them.

# iwlist wlan0 scan >> users.txt

You can then open the users.txt file to see what available networks.

# pico users.txt

If you got a good scan you should see available networks. Here is the first entry of my file:
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: C0:C1:C0:33:15:A0
Channel:1
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=51/70 Signal level=-59 dBm
Encryption key:off
ESSID:"Available_Network"
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=00000187ae75818f
Extra: Last beacon: 1493ms ago
IE: Unknown: 00074D75646B69707A
IE: Unknown: 010882848B962430486C
IE: Unknown: 030101
IE: Unknown: 2A0104
IE: Unknown: 2F0104
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: Unknown: 32040C121860
IE: Unknown: 2D1AFC181BFFFF000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
IE: Unknown: 3D1601001300000000000000000000000000000000000000
IE: Unknown: 4A0E14000A002C01C800140005001900
IE: Unknown: 7F0101
IE: Unknown: DD810050F204104A00011010440001021041000100103B00010310470010C482204C2B61E8508D2361B71C41926B1021000C 4C696E6B73797320496E632E1023000D4C696E6B737$
IE: Unknown: DD090010180201F0040000
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101800003A4000027A4000042435E0062322F00
IE: Unknown: DD1E00904C33FC181BFFFF000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
IE: Unknown: DD1A00904C3401001300000000000000000000000000000000000000

I pick the network I want to use and make a note of it's ESSID. I then bring down the card briefly:

# ifconfig wlan0 down

I then load my wireless card with the ESSID name of the network I want to use. If you are trying to get onto a network with an encrypted key you will have to load the key as well.

If key is off:

# iwconfig wlan0 essid "Availabl_Network"

If there is a key is on I type:

# iwconfig wlan0 essid "Available_Network" key 123456

Now you have to bring the card back up:

# ifconfig wlan0 up

You can check with ifconfig command again if you like, or just try and connect to the net with dhclient.


# dhclient wlan0

You can then check your connection with the ping command:

# ping www.google.com

If you are live you should get a ping response similar to:
PING www.l.google.com (74.125.157.104) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from gy-in-f104.1e100.net (74.125.157.104): icmp_req=1 ttl=52 time=30.5 ms
64 bytes from gy-in-f104.1e100.net (74.125.157.104): icmp_req=2 ttl=52 time=31.5 ms

Just hit Ctrl z to exit.

You should also probably shut off the ping process so you are not wasting processor energy

# pkill -9 ping

That is it! Hopefully you are on the internet. I can not guarantee this will work for every situation, but works with my card.

Slackware 13.37 Config issues (wirless & compiling)
 

Hi *

1.Rant
Ok for starters I never really have used linux (except messing around on PHLAK along time ago), so I understand if some people think i'm crazy for trying Slack 1st.
To my defense I have a very technical background(in win), and I think windows is moving away admin friendly configuring for as the "home" systems. This is why I didn't want to try ubuntu. The system picks how it works, and you cant work as root from what I hear.


I've got slack installed that seemed to be were the easy part stopped.

2. ISSUES
PKG compiling
I learned how to use pkgtools, to install pkg with .tgz, but I cant figure out how to .bz2 extraction & compile, with tarballs (tar.gz) I extract with #tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz (is #tar -xvjf for .bz2) but i have not figured out which dir to use for the #./config step
So I have installed slackpgk & slapt-get but normally they say pkg not found. I did get both to up date.
I've tried to down load pgk's with .rpm but when i extract it goes to tar.gz....WHY!!! lol

Wirelesscard
OK so when I got slackpkg to get me the /extras i rebooted to see if it would find my wireless card out of the box. nope, so i tried to see if #/lib/udev/nethelper.sh would list it but i got the following "Interface not supported" this leads me to believe i am missing a kernel
other commands tried #iwconfig "no wireless extensions for lo & eth0" #vim /etc/rc.d/rc.wirless.config just shows examples unless i am reading it wrong. and didnt want to mess with #/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf just yet.

MISC
1What is the difference between "Konsole" & "terminal"?
2Is there more editors in terminal than vi &vim?
3How do you get terminal to predict the code your typing?
Is there anything you would like to share to a 1st time user?

Thank you for taking the time to read me post.

P.s
here is my sysinfo http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...roduct=3747931

Please search for some generic UNIX information (using configure and make to compile source code into binaries) because without even this basic understanding of Linux software compilation you will soon feel as lost as if you were actually
using Ubuntu.
For Slackware, some more to-the-point information is contained in the Slackware Book, see for instance this chapter: http://slackbook.org/html/package-management.html


It looks like your HP laptop has a Broadcom hybrid wireless chip, this hardware is supported in Linux but a driver is not part of Slackware 13.37. You can get a SlackBuild script for the driver here: http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.../broadcom-sta/ . Read the slackbuilds.org HOWTO to learn how to create a package out of that SlackBuild script: http://slackbuilds.org/howto/

(1) both Konsole and Terminal are X-Window terminal applications. Konsole is part of the KDE desktop environment, Terminal belongs to the XFCE desktop. There are more X terminal emulators, the most basic being "xterm".

(2) Of course, there is "nano" for instance which is pretty stright-forward. Also, there is emacs but that may be a bit too far-fetched for you. There are a few emacs variants, called "jed," "jove" and "joe".

(3) The terminal will not "predict" however it is able to do suggestions about the completion of partial commands you type. This is called "bash autocompletion" and it is a feature of the Bash shell. There is no magic involved. Bash is just looking at your filesystem, but only when you type a <TAB>.

Final advice: read, read, try, read, read! And ask your questions here. Remember, there are no stupid questions... only stupid people :-)

Eric

Instead of compiling and installing from source, you should install pre-packaged software. In http://slackbuilds.org/ you will find a huge selection of software already packaged for Slackware. The packages are still compiled and created on your computer but the .SlackBuild script takes care of that for you.
Read the HOWTO section and start building and installing something simple (i.e. without dependencies). For example, as a test you could install "lame", a command line MP3 encoder.

One minor addition to the very useful answer from Alien Bob - and something I had to figure out when I started with Slack:

1. Files ending in .tgz (and newer style - .txz) are Slackware packages. These are tarred and compressed with gz (and respectively xz) compression specifically packaged to be installed on a Slackware box - with a particular internal folder structure. They can be installed using pkgtools (specifically the installpkg, upgradepkg and removepkg commands).
2. Files ending in tar.gz or tar.bz2 tend to be (but no always) generic source files. These packages need to be compiled and then installed. They are not normally specific to Slackware - they can be compiled and installed on pretty much any flavour of Linux (and other Unices, many times). The generic procedure for compiling these packages (specially the ones containing software written in C and C++, but not only) tends to be:

(Omit the # character, or course). I tend to do the above in the /usr/src folder, to keep things clean and out of the way - but it can also be done in the user's home folder. You can find the full set of configure options for a particular software with ./configure --help. With Slackware I tend to use at least "--prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var" - as these are where Slackware tends to keep its corresponding files - but extra options can be used depending on what software you are compiling.

However, for the beginning, you will probably be better off with pre-compiled packages which you can just install with the installpkg command. I used a lot the www.slacky.eu repository - not sure if it is the approved option around here though :-)

Thank all of you very much. It's crazy the difference in support from Linux versus Win. It makes me think I might just able to be a Slacker after all. ;) Sorry about the rant last time; 37 hours straight for new user is a alittle tolling but fun.

UPDATE
I've got the swing of compiling.

However I am trying to debug my wireless card. Eric, It is a BCM94322MC. I dont know if the issue is because it is a mini card.
It is running the [14e4:43ab] controller, but #ifconfig does not show it.

So currently I have 20 tabs open on linux wireless, I will get it soon... hopefully

A many thanks again
-Mitch

As far as compiling from source is concerned, it'd be good if you learnt how to do it manually (no harm in knowing it and it's really simple). Once you know it you can google for the src2pkg utility which will convert the source to a slack package ready to install. Having said that you still need to make sure that all the dependencies are satisfied.

As far as the Broadcom wireless card goes - last time I configured a Broadcom adapter on a laptop in Slackware I had to come up with the firmware. Slackware doesn't ship with firmware for certain devices - I believe it is because of copyright issues, but I could be wrong. Here are some steps I always find useful:

1. Start by checking out the Linux Wireless pages (http://linuxwireless.org/). These are the pages where the Linux kernel developers for wireless modules upload information about what is supported in the present kernel and by which module.
2. By going to Users (at the top) -> Drivers, and looking for all Broadcom modules - you should be able to figure out which module supports your card. If you look in the details page, it will normally also tell you which firmware is needed (and many times what the file is supposed to be called).
3. Firmware in Slackware goes in /lib/firmware.
4. I got away with finding on the net firmware already prepared by somebody else on occasion, but there are full instructions for using fwcutter to extract the firmware from the Windows drivers for your card.
5. Another way to find out the exact name you are supposed to use for the firmware file is to run the dmesg command just after trying to insert the kernel module for your wireless card:

You will normally see in the last few dmesg lines that the kernel was looking for a particular firmware file and it couldn't find it. Your kernel module will be something like b43 or one of the other Broadcom modules.

Once you have the firmware in place, your system will normally detect the wlan0 interface on startup - and you can configure it in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf, or by other methods - such as the graphical wicd software.

I suggest that if you need further assistance with other issues, you might want to post separate threads with specific questions - this way it is likely more people will notice and reply.

Good luck and welcome to Slackware.

Thank for help guys.... I now move on to building a firewall 0_o

-Mitch
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
-Albert Einstein