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| Newer page: | version 5 | Last edited on Sunday, January 16, 2005 4:40:37 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 2 | Last edited on Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:34:41 am | by MattBrown | Revert |
@@ -1,13 +1,14 @@
!!! Notes on Setting Up Wireless Networks in Linux
This page details how you can setup a wireless connection under linux, and hopefully some tips and tricks that you can use to simplify the task.
-There are several methods you can use to configure a wireless interface in a linux computer, often these a distribution specific. This page takes the approach of showing you how to manually setup a link at the command line before delving in to distribution specific details. While this page is written with 802.11b it should be generic enough to help with other wireless technologies such as 802.11g as well.
+There are several methods you can use to configure a wireless interface in a linux computer, often these a distribution specific. This page takes the approach of showing you how to manually setup a link at the command line before delving in to distribution specific details. While this page is written with 802.11b in mind
it should be generic enough to help with other wireless technologies such as 802.11g as well.
The structure of this page is a number of steps that should be executed in order, at the end of each step is a ''Troubleshooting'' section that should help you to fix any problems that you encountered. Do not proceed to the next step unless you are sure you have completed all the preceding steps correctly!
!! Verify Environment
-First we need to check that there is a wireless card in your computer to. To get a list of all wireless interfaces in the machine use the ''iwconfig'' command, in
the example shown below we can see that this particular computer has a single wireless interface called ''eth2''. The rest of the output provides details of the current configuration of the wireless interface. Ignore that for now, we'll deal with it later - the important thing here is that you have a wireless interface installed and ready to go.
+First we need to check that there is a wireless card in your computer to. To get a list of all wireless interfaces in the machine use the ''iwconfig'' command. In Debian
, this command is part of the package called __wireless-tools__.
+In
the example shown below we can see that this particular computer has a single wireless interface called ''eth2''. The rest of the output provides details of the current configuration of the wireless interface. Ignore that for now, we'll deal with it later - the important thing here is that you have a wireless interface installed and ready to go.
<verbatim>
xenon:~# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
@@ -27,11 +28,12 @@
!Troubleshooting
If ''iwconfig'' does not show any wireless interfaces in your computer you have a problem! Steps to fix it
* Check that you do actually have a wireless card installed
-* Check that you have the appropriate modules (driver) for your card compiled, see WirelessChipsets for more information on this
-* Check that PCMCIA is correctly configured if you are using a miniPCI card
-* If still stuck, google, or try the wlug mailing list
.
+* Check that you have the appropriate modules (driver) for your card compiled and successfully loaded
, see WirelessChipsets for more information on this
+* Check that [
PCMCIA]
is correctly configured if you are using a miniPCI card
+* If still stuck, try
google, or try emailing the WlugMailingList.
+* As with most system settings commands, you must su(1) to the root user for
the command to have permissions to query hardware devices
.
!! Determine Wireless Settings
At this step we need to determine the parameters of our wireless. The biggest question here is the mode of the link. If you are connecting to an Access-Point then you will ned to configure your interface in ''Managed'' mode, otherwise for connecting two or more computers directly to each other you will need to use ''Ad-Hoc'' mode. The following steps will provide an example of each mode. The other three peices of information that you need are ''Channel'', ''ESSID'' and ''Network''. ''Channel'' specifices the Physical frequency that your wireless card transmits and receives on. ''ESSID'' can be thought of as a Network Name and is used to allow multiple logically seperate wireless networks to operate on the same channel. ''Network'' is the IP settings that you will use to communicate with the other end of the link. All four of these parameters (Mode, Channel, ESSID and Network) need to be agreed on between the two ends of the link for it to function correctly. The values that the remainder of this example will use for these parameters are shown below.
