wireless help

[Guest omar2006]

Hello,

I have a broadcom wireless which works fine when I am trying to connect to wireless networks that are open and have DHCP enabled but I can't connect to wireless networks that are not broadcasting and have static IP.

 

At home my wireless router doesn't broadcast its signal.

I need help in setting my wireless connection at home.

 

In windows I supply the following information:

SSID

ip address

subnet mask

default gateway

DNS1

DNS2

 

The following info might also be helpful

encryption type is TKIP

I provide a network key

And network authentication is WPA-Personal (PSK)

 

So how do I go about setting up my wireless connection in mandriva 2007? Is it possible to do it manually by configuring some file?

Thanks,

--omar

[pmpatrick]

By and large, setting up wpa in linux is a huge pain. You are using a broadcom wireless nic which indicates to me that you are probably using ndiswrapper with the windows driver. Please confirm this or if you don't know what I'm talking about post back and say so. AFAIK wpa will not work with ndiswrapper.

Even if you have a native linux driver that is wpa capable, setting up wpa is still very involved. IIRC you need to install a package called wpa suplicant for starters and then the fun begins.

The static ip and cloaked SSID are no problem to configure. If you change to WEP on your home system, you can probably set up in linux without many problems. Basically, you can just edit your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 file. At least that's the most direct way of doing it; the gui tools just indirectly edit this file for you.

Post back with more info and I'll try and help.

[ianw1974]

wpa does work with ndiswrapper, I use it with my atheros card :P

 

I have a basic config file at home, will try to remember to post it, but this is all you need for wpa to get it working with ndiswrapper. If I forget, send me a pm and I'll send it to you.

[riseringseeker]

By and large, setting up wpa in linux is a huge pain.

 

It sure was anything but a pain for me! I have it setup here at home using a Belkin router, and my laptop uses a linksys pcmcia insertable card. When I set it up, IIRC, it just told me that wpa-supplicant was needed, and asked if I wanted to install it. Clicked yes, and I was off to the races.

 

I use the laptop all over (literally) and need wpa capability elsewhere from time to time. I would remember if it was a major PITA to setup/install.

 

You are using a broadcom wireless nic which indicates to me that you are probably using ndiswrapper with the windows driver. Please confirm this or if you don't know what I'm talking about post back and say so. AFAIK wpa will not work with ndiswrapper.

Even if you have a native linux driver that is wpa capable, setting up wpa is still very involved. IIRC you need to install a package called wpa suplicant for starters and then the fun begins.

 

What kind of problems did you see?

 

The static ip and cloaked SSID are no problem to configure. If you change to WEP on your home system, you can probably set up in linux without many problems. Basically, you can just edit your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 file. At least that's the most direct way of doing it; the gui tools just indirectly edit this file for you.

 

Agreed, but sometimes Mandy "wizards" like to keep control over some things, and will overwrite manually made changes - something to keep in mind if things don't stay the way you configured them. I believe I just used the "wizards" to do almost all of my setup. The only thing I had to do with the CLI, was edit the modprobe.preload to load ndiswrapper when needed (i.e. put the card in when the `puter was already running)

[pmpatrick]

I had a lot of trouble with wpa on a broadcom chipset wireless card on a dell lapatop. I never did get it to work at all with wpa and ndiswrapper so I went to wep. That was about two years ago and I haven't tried recently as I'm not that concerned about security on a home system. WEP is adequte for my purposes.

In my experience, performance and capabilities under ndiswrapper vary greatly depending on the chipset of the wireless nic, the kernel and the version of ndiswrapper used. Historically, broadcom has been one of the least linux friendly wireless vendors.

 

Re what's involved in setting up wpa under linux:

 

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/WPA

 

To me, that's pretty involved for a newb. Maybe the process is streamlined in mandirva's gui wireless networking tools, but I just don't trust them so I haven't used them to setup anything complex for some time.

[ianw1974]

Mandriva's gui did work fine for ndiswrapper and wpa, but would "forget" the config and default to wep.

 

This is all I had in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf after manually editing it:

 

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
  ssid="myssid"
  psk="mysecret"
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  proto=WPA
}

 

that's all that is required, of course replacing your ssid and psk with the relevant values and you're away.

 

Oh, and adding the following to /etc/modprobe.preload:

 

ndiswrapper

 

and you're done. At least, it worked for me on my atheros chipset, I don't know how difficult it would be on other cards if not the same in terms of workability.

[Guest omar2006]

Hello All,

Thanks for the help.

 

ianw1974 had it right. I have been able to get the Mandrake wireless tool to setup my WPA connection correctly but it forgets after reboots and doesn't sometime even work. I followed the instructions that ianw1974 provided but that didn't work for me either. So I just changed my authentication to WEP and it works fine.

 

Thanks all,

-omar2006