<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Chanoch (Ken) Bloom <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kbloom@gmail.com">kbloom@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 12:42:36PM -0400, Peter Salzman wrote:<br>
> I'm having a horrendously awful time getting wireless networking working on<br>
> my Kubuntu box. I've never played around with wireless networking on Linux<br>
> before and wanted to consolidate my knowledge and see if I understand it<br>
> correctly. My two wireless cards are:<br>
><br>
> Edimax EW-7318usg<br>
> 148F:2573 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2501USB wireless adapter<br>
><br>
> Alfa AWUS050NH<br>
> 148F:2770 Ralink Technology, Corp.<br>
><br>
> If this were wired networking, the steps I would take would be:<br>
><br>
> 1. Plug in the card into the computer and connect it to the router.<br>
> 2. Load the correct driver.<br>
> 3. Bring the interface up and assign an IP addr, either manually with<br>
> ifconfig or automatically with dhclient.<br>
> 3a. If manual was used in step 3, resolv.conf must contain the DNS servers<br>
> and a gateway must be specified with "route".<br>
><br>
> I assume wireless networking must work more or less the same way. The two<br>
> things that are causing me grief are:<br>
><br>
> 1. I don't know if the drivers are correct.<br>
<br>
</div>dmesg should clue you in to that.<br>
You can also run ifconfig -a or iwconfig to see whether the interface<br>
appears in the list. If that works, then your driver works. (Well, if<br>
it appears in the list but doesn't work, then you're into bug hunting,<br>
really.)<br></blockquote><div><br>Unfortunately, that's kind of where I am, and part of why it's so frustrating. The interfaces definitely show up, but I can't connect to the WAN.<br><br>I wasn't sure if it was non-functional driver, wpa_supplicant not working, some option or parameter that needs to be set somewhere. <br>
</div><div><br>So you're saying that if the interface can be brought up, say, by "ifconfig wlan1 192.168.0.5 up" then I can safely cross driver off the list of possible things that went wrong?<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">
> 2. Security details (WEP, WPA, etc)<br>
<br>
</div>Use wpasupplicant.<br>
<br>
wpasupplicant maintains a configuration file with a list of networks<br>
and their encryption types and passwords. When you run wpasupplicant,<br>
it looks to see what's available that it knows about, picks one and<br>
connects (to the wireless router -- then it's your job to set up the<br>
IP address yourself.) If it doesn't know about any of the available<br>
networks, it doesn't connect to any of them, even if they're<br>
unencrypted.<br>
<br>
For some security confiurations (pretty much only WEP), you can use<br>
iwconfig. iwconfig is the low level tool for connecting<br>
to the network. It doesn't remember anything about any networks (kinda<br>
like how ifconfig works)<br></blockquote><div><br>OK, I had no idea, but this is great info! If worse comes to worse, I'll set network security to WEP temporarily.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
Either way, you can check whether it worked by running iwconfig -- it<br>
it says "Access Point: Not-Associated", you failed. If it gives a MAC<br>
address, then you succeded.<br>
<br>
Your new set of steps:<br>
<div class="im"><br>
1. Plug in the card into the computer and connect it to the router.<br>
</div> (check by looking at dmesg to see the USB subsystem recognizes that<br>
it was plugged in.)<br>
2. Load the correct driver. (May happen automatically by udev)<br>
(check by running ifconfig -a to see what name the interface was<br>
given)<br>
3. Bring the interface up and connect to a wireless network<br>
option 1: use wpa_supplicant for all of this.<br>
option 2: use ifconfig/iwconfig for the various steps<br>
(check by running iwconfig to see whether it's associated with a<br>
particular MAC address. Maybe you could do some kind of arp lookup<br>
at this point also.)<br>
4. Assign an IP address<br>
option 1: dhclient<br>
option 2: ifconfig/route/vi resolv.conf<br>
(check by pinging something)<br>
<br>
In general, you probably want to use something like network-manager or<br>
wicd to handle connecting to wireless networks. Even if you'd<br>
ordinarily prefer to write your own networking configuration script,<br>
or hard code information in /etc/network/interfaces, and let Debian<br>
do it for you you're most likely going to be using a lot more<br>
different networks (with a lot more varied configurations) with your<br>
wireless card than you typically do with your wired ethernet.<br>
<br>
If you've reached the driver step and successfully loaded the driver,<br>
you can watch the state of your wireless card in real time using wavemon<br>
It will show you signal strength, which AP you're associated with, and<br>
your IP address as they change (which can be useful to have in another<br>
window while you're fighting through the details of configuring the<br>
network.)<font color="#888888"><a href="http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech" target="_blank"></a></font> </blockquote><div><br>Awesome!!! The wavemon idea is spectacular. Hope to report good news tonight.<br>
<br>Pete</div></div><br>