[WYLUG-HELP] wireless lan notebook card installation

[Shaun Laughey]

On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 23:13 +0000, Mike Goodman wrote:
> Simon, the first statement at your link is :
> 
> 
> > Important Update
> > Ralink has put their source code under the GPL. The rt2x00 Open Source
> > Project has picked up the code and is in the process of developing a
> > stable and feature rich Linux driver for wireless 802.11b and 802.11g
> > cards that are based on the Ralink rt2400 and rt2500 chipsets.
> > 
> > This pretty much obsoletes this HOWTO. I tried their lates CVS version
> > and it worked out of the box (2005-01-05). So please go to:
> > http://rt2400.sourceforge.net and follow the instructions there
> 
> 
> which is exactly what I did in the first place, except mine was rt2500
> instead of 2400.
> 
> Sean, it seems FC4 has an equivalent interface.
> 
> There is a GUI configuration in FC4 called "Wireless Device
> Configuration" with four tabs across the top. In order, with contents:
> 
> "General"
> nickname wlan0; checked is "activate device when computer starts",
> "automatically obtain IP address settings with dhcp" and
> "automatically obtain DNS settings form provider"
> 
> "Route"
> all blank under three headings, Destination Network, Prefix(Netmask) and
> Gateway, and there are add, edit and delete options.
> 
> "Hardware Devices"
> wlan0 (RaLink Ralink RT2500 802.11 Cardbus Reference card)
> device alias number is unchecked and there is a checked option
> Bind to MAC address 00:0e:2e:6b:ed:55
> 
> finally, "Wireless Settings"
> Mode: Managed
> Network Name (SSID) with auto button checked
> Channel 6
> Transmit Rate auto
> Key 0x
> 
> The setting Channel under the "Wireless Settings" tab may be wrong, the
> howto said set it to your AP's channel and I don't even know what an AP
> is, let alone how to find its channel. Guidance here about whether I
> need to learn more would be appreciated. The simpler the better. My aim
> is to have a portable box working, not to become a wireless guru.
> 
> Finally, in those settings, Key0x. It is to do with a security setting
> and, again, not something I understand. I recognise the importance of
> security. However, I wanted to get the thing working with something like
> default settings then ask for advice about strapping it down later.
> However, if I have to set this properly first, or if there is a null
> setting I should use first, please advise.
> 
> Under the "Hardware" tab in Network Configuration (part of the same gui
> interface) on clicking "edit" I found "Device wlan0" and "IRQ Unknown"
> which looks worrying to me. Is this where the problem lies? Or a red
> herring?
> 
> I found nothing else which looked pertinent, so please advise if I
> haven't looked hard enough.
> 
> TIA, Mike

Hiya Mike,

AP = Access Point which is what you might need to connect to the
internet. A wireless card is nearly useless without one.

It might be worthwhile to see if your card is working before any of this
though - I used to have a problem where my network would come up before
PCMCIA which wasn't much use.

A symptom of that was by stopping and starting pcmcia services and then
stopping and starting the network everything magically worked until the
next reboot.

You can connect to the internet via another wireless enabled PC (called
ad-hoc mode and would appear in those configuration screens where you
have managed) but it's not normally done because of the lower level of
security and a poor implementation under other operating systems
especially the one that appears on some 'smart' phones.

You can use a utility called iwlist to discover some information about
your access point like the channel in a console/konsole/gnome-terminal
window. You may have to be root to use it.

iwlist wlan0 scan

This will report any access points that your card can see. With luck one
of those will be the one you are allowed to use.

It won't tell you the security settings though - you'll have to get
those from the access point. 

Normally the details on connecting to that using an old fashioned wire
network will be in the instructions with the access point for example
mine could be at http://192.168.2.1 although I could have a retired one
that was at http://10.0.0.1 and one that has to use SNMP and a program
called ap-utils to set up.

Hope this helps,

Shaun.