[Quantian-general] Centrino wireless?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 1 January 2006 at 16:38, Gary wrote:
| I can't get Quantian to work my wireless.
| 
| My Thinkpad T41 is a Centrino machine (Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 3B).  I 
| know that there  have been  Linux/Centrino issues in the past; I know 
| that drivers now exist, and ndiswrapper is available.  I've poked around 
| the Knoppix sites a bit ... no luck yet, so I thought I'd ask here.

First off, I should note that I find wireless still somewhat difficult to
work with under the best of times and am generally happy if and when it
works. That said, I tend to neither add nor subtract anything on wireless (or
auto-configuration in general) from Knoppix.  So if it works with Knoppix,
chances are it should work with Quantian. If it doesn't work with Knoppix,
tough ...  
 
| There's a KDE app ... name is something like kwifisetup.  It sees 
| signal, tells me that the signal strength is tops, and even finds the 

I take that to imply that your hardware is found and activated. That is a
huge step.

| name of my wireless network.  But no other activity works.  Ping finds 
| nothing.
| 
| Any pointers?

Have you actually configured the card?   'Network/Internet -> Wavelan
configuration' is what I need to use.

Note that you may have to do this as root:
	$ /etc/init.d/pcmcia start
to (re-)start PCMCIA. I need that on my old laptop so that the Netgear WG511
add-on pcmcia card gets recognised.  After that I need enter all the
parameters in the 'Network/Internet -> Wavelan Configuration' (as I use a WEP
key, I need to enter it here; I also add the ESSID of my access point, and
the channel number; defaults for the rest).  That was the only way to it in
Quantian 0.6.9.*, now with 0.7.9.1 you can also enter paramters in the
kwifimanager. 

Now the critical part that you *still* need to call for DHCP networking via
'Network/Internet -> Network card configuration'. Select the appropriate
card, say yet to DHCP and you should be set.  
  
| I've tried ndiswrapper, but the files I point it to aren't recognized as 
| valid. Not sure what's up with that.

As I understand it, ndiswrapper would be need to load a (Windows) driver for
your card. As you already have a signal you don't need it.

| BTW, the VMware browser demo works the wireless just fine.

That uses Ubuntu, doesn't it? Different config script -- but the good news is
that you could analyse what modules are used, what parameters are passed etc
pp.  But it looks like all you need is to start DHCP.

Cheers, Dirk

-- 
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison