Re: [gentoo-user] Wireless Help

[Colleen Beamer]

Okay, I'm totally confused now and don't know what to do!

On 7/7/06, Michael Crute <mcrute@×××××.com> wrote:

>
> I would really recommend you use wpa_supplicant as IMO it is far
> easier to configure and supports more access methods than iwconfig.
> Since your wireless card is clearly detected it should be trivial to
> setup. Check out this article in the wiki (which you may have already
> looked at):
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Wireless_Configuration_and_Startup#Configuration_using_wpa_supplicant



When I boot my computer and do modprobe ndiswrapper, and then run iwconfig,
I get the following (as I stated in my previous post)

>
> > localhost ~ # iwconfig
> > lo        no wireless extensions.
> >
> > eth0      no wireless extensions.
> >
> > wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"beam26wireless"
> >           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point:
> 00:13:10:99:9C:BF
> >           Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:25 dBm
> >           RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
> >           Encryption key:off
> >           Power Management:off
> >           Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-60 dBm  Noise level:-256
> dBm
> >           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
> >           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0



I can connect in a "clunky" fashion if I type 'ifconfig wlan0 up' and then
'dhcpcd wlan0' from the command line.

However, what I want to do is to be able to connect automatically to my
wireless access point, or for that matter any available wireless access
point.

So, I took the above advice and emerged wpa_supplicant.

Following the wiki, I created very simple wpa_supplicant.conf file by
copying the following lines from the wpa_supplicant.conf.example file,
pasting them into the wpa_supplicant.conf file that I was creating and
modifying them for my own situation.

network={
        ssid="beam26wireless"
        scan_ssid=1
        psk="******"
        priority=2
}

I did put something into the psk= filed, but have blanked it out here.  From
the example file this seemed to be most suited to my situation.  Right now,
I haven't set up encryption on my cable/DSL router because my son connects
wirelessly with his Windows computer and he'll have a fit if he can't
connect until I can tear him of the laptop long enough to enter the
encryption code into his wireless configuration.

Next, the wiki said to put these lines into the /etc/conf.d/net file (which
had nothing in it because it assumes dhcp):



modules=( "wpa_supplicant" )

wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dndiswrapper"
wpa_timeout_wlan0=60

Again, these lines have been modified to suit my situation.

However, if I boot the laptop without the ethernet cable connected, it hangs
when running the dhcpcd daemon.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but I don't know what.

Any further assistance would be appreciated and I apologize for having to be
"led by the nose".

Regards,

Colleen

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