[Preston] Network Newbie need help with WiFi

[entwisi]

Hi guys(and gals)

 I am a relative newbie to linux and networking in general and was
wondering if anyone could help. I have a wireless LAN running in XP Pro
but I am trying to convert to Mandrake. I have sorted all my other
issues(NVidia drivers, ADSL connection etc) but  this has me stumped.

IN XP my setup sort of defies convention but works OK. Basically I have
an Actiontec PCI wifi card(DABs value range) in my box and a Actiontec
USB WiFi adaptor in SWMBOs set to Ad-hoc. Under XP I had a little fun
getting everything working. In the end the setup is as follows. My PC
has a fixed IP (192.168.1.0 subnet 255.255.255.0) with a workgroup
called "Workgroup". SWMBOs has a dynamic assigned IP(which is always
169.254.171.47 subnet 255.255.0.0) with workgroup "MSHOME". This allows
File sharing and Internet connection through my box with no major
problems. I don't really know why it works cause I was told both
workgroup names should be the same as should the IPs be in the same
range. 

So... I need to get ICS and file sharing working under MDK9.0. I
understand that for the file sharing I need to configure Samba but at
the moment I can't even ping the boxes so I am not playing around in
that just yet. Through searching Google I found that my card needs the
orinoco_pci module (it has a Prism 2.5 chipset which is recognised in
Harddrake) rather than the orinoco_cs or wavelan drivers. I eventually
found this module. On issuing modprobe orinoco_pci when I start MDK
Control centre an eth0 appears. In the /var/log/messages file I see 

 Nov 20 19:31:20 localhost kernel: eth0: Channel out of range (0)!
Nov 20 19:31:21 localhost /etc/hotplug/net.agent: invoke ifup eth0
Nov 20 19:31:24 localhost kernel: eth0: Channel out of range (0)!
Nov 20 19:37:49 localhost last message repeated 2 times


 I have the wireless tools installed, the output of ifconfig and
iwconfig are as follows, I had set essid before doing this(my ppp IP
munged for security)

[root@localhost log]# 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:454 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:454 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:28898 (28.2 Kb)  TX bytes:28898 (28.2 Kb)

ppp0      Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
          inet addr:*.*.*.*  P-t-P:81.86.144.1  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:10534 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:9982 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
          RX bytes:10065226 (9.5 Mb)  TX bytes:908863 (887.5 Kb)

[root@localhost log]# iwconfig
eth0      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"Workgroup"  Nickname:"Prism  I"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:42.9497GHz  Access Point:
00:00:00:00:00:00
          Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0/92  Signal level:-68 dBm  Noise level:-122 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0



Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is teh last hurdle to a
M$free world.<fx: cheers abound as another one leaves the nest>

Cheers

Ian