HowTo: Configure your Wireless Network

[sysman]

Hi,
I am running VL5.9/gold on a toshiba satellite L40-14H. It has a usb-wifi modem, which is detected when I run:
                                 lsusb
The id is 0bda:8197. Googling gives only one other reference to someone trying to get the device running.
vasm->hardware->hwconf doesnt detect it & since I dont know what the module name should be, i cant manually add the alias.

Anyone got any ideas?

[gamfa]

That is the Realtek Rtl8187B card. I have the same card in my A215-S7428. You have 4 options for it. Two worked for me and two didn't.


1. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Rtl8187_wireless worked

2. http://www.datanorth.net/~cuervo/blog/2007/09/26/no-more-vista/#comments worked

3. Ndiswrapper  didn't work

4. Load VL's 2.6.24 kernel which has the driver native in it to 5.9.  didn't work


Pick your posion....

[kc600]

This is a great how-to! It was all i needed to get wireless working on my Sitecom WL-168 USB wlan adapter (with rtl8187L chipset, via ndiswrapper).

A small hint from the Gentoo forum that solved my problem with WPA (I got an error saying "driver does not support wpa") was this:

Code:

wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

instead of

Code:

wpa_supplicant -B -Dndiswrapper -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

So now I have wireless on my ancient Pentium III, 250M Ram laptop, cool!

[majisterludi]

Most excellent HowTo.

I had grief trying to get ndiswrapper to work with SoHo 5.9.1. I was surprised as it had worked fine with the Wifi card on this rig with both 5.9 Standard Gold and 5.9 Lite Final. [This Nic is based on the Texas instruments ACX111 chip. It is a Netgear WG311v2. pci card]

ndiswrapper -i would round up and  load the usual  suspect, modprobe could not find ndiswrapper! Hmmm. Tried 2 different cds trying to rule out a bad Iso burn- no joy.

Googleing led me to download latest ndiswrapper from sourceforge and install per ndiswrapper's recipe in the readme file. Suddenly, modprobe can now find ndiswrapper and the wifi card can find the network!

Discussions in various places raised the specter of kernel changes, modprobe requiring usbcore and other esoterica. This worked for me. Hope it helps someone else.

magoo

[gamfa]

When setting up a router to authenticate by MAC address, are the addresses case sensitive? I see in /var/log messages the address given uses lower case alpha characters but ifconfig reports them in upper case.

[Joe1962]

When setting up a router to authenticate by MAC address, are the addresses case sensitive?

No.

They are actually hexadecimal numbers, so from 0 to 9 and a to f.

[gamfa]

Thanks

[Hiero2]

I believe the how-to needs to be clarified/corrected right at the start. I'm stepping thru it, and I get to doing

lspci

. I get this:
root:# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M266 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]
00:0a.0 Network controller: Texas Instruments ACX 100 22Mbps Wireless Interface
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. VT8375 [ProSavage8 KM266/KL266]

The first set of digits do NOT look like your USB "ID" numbers, and they get me garbage on Google. Therefore, I'm guessing they arent the ID mentioned, and that, for this purpose, they are garbage. Fortunately, I also get

Network controller: Texas Instruments ACX 100 22Mbps Wireless Interface

This may indeed be the info I need - or it may not, Idk, but I will find out, soon enuff.

[Daniel]

The first set of digits do NOT look like your USB "ID" numbers,

that's because they aren't USB ID numbers, they are (I believe) PCI ID numbers. The command lspci shows your PCI devices. To see your USB devices, use lsusb .

[Hiero2]

lsusb - quite correct. But I still say the instruction sets should cover that to clarify that point for newbs like me. The instructions are very good, and have been helpful for other points. For instance, I was having trouble getting ndiswrapper to take my card driver - until I read in the directions to use the inf file. Then that worked!

[sledgehammer]

Hiero2

I'm not a newbe, I suppose, but still feel like one most of the time. 

I want to thank for your post as it, somewhat indirectly, solved a wireless problem for me.  I use VL 6.0 on an old IBM T42, which I just love.  But it has an older wireless chip and won't do the new wireless G.  That is becoming more and more of a problem.  The other day, I was at a seminar and all that was offered was G. Then tonight I saw your post, reviving easuter's great, but somewhat dated, wireless "How to."  I have had a Broadcom G PCMCIA card sitting around for a couple of years, I believe.  Whenever I bought it, I was unable to make it work. Decided to try again, this time on VL 6.  Looked at easuter's post, which gave me BCM4306, and then decided that following those instructions would take a while, so got on the forums and searched for BCM4306.  That took me to Bigpaw's 12/27/08 post to Scottmc9

Re: WLAN0 Device Not Recognized, Wireless AP Invalid and Other Unexplainables
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2008, 05:07:12 pm »
   Reply with quoteQuote
iirc ndiswrapper should not be needed since it is a broadcom
chipset. The firmware for the kernel should already be installed
so all you should have to do is run vlwifi.

So, I put in the card, tried wicd (guessed it was wlan2) and it worked great!  Had to run the firestarter wizard again, but now I have G and, if I ever need it or the card breaks, B.

So thanks to all.

John

[millyjohn]

There are basically 4 steps to set up home wireless network...
1. Choose your wireless equipment
2. Connect your wireless router
3. Configure your wireless router
4. Connect your computers to the wireless network
You can get more detail about it by searching on net.

[agustinvega]

I think my driver is installed correctly
agus:$ ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
   device (14E4:4315) present (alternate driver: ssb)
root:# ndiswrapper -m
adding "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modules.conf ...

But the problem is setting the alias I think because the changes or multiples .conf files

root:# mcedit /etc/modprobe.conf
root:# modprobe ndiswrapper
WARNING: Deprecated config file /etc/modprobe.conf, all config files belong into /etc/modprobe.d/.
wlan0: unknown interface: No such device

I am on Vector 7 on HP Pavilion dv2000 and the wirless card is bradcom 4312

Need help to get my wirless up