Setting up an internet connection with a Wireless LAN Card.

polle · Veteran Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1498 Location: Belgium

the lspci command wil give info about your pci hardware ( about your wireless nic also, so in that way you can see which card you exactly have)
Still try that ndiswrapper -l command, that will give also usefull info

MEtoLinuxNoob · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 55

But the question here is how do we get our wireless LANs to work? I already know the name of my Wireless LAN. Has anyone ever installed Gentoo with a wireless LAN. Ever??
_________________
I have a 64mb RAM computer that's stuck with Windows ME. I need your help to switch to Gentoo! (Oh yeah and I bought a 512mb stick of RAM the other day)

Zaron · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

I am not sure what you do next with that info Meto.
Sith_Happens and feminista both suggested that we use it and tell them the result. so I did. I hope they are still monitoring this subject.

polle · Veteran Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1498 Location: Belgium

@Metolinuxnoob
why don't you try the command I asked,it will give the information if ndiswrapper is installed correctly

Sith_Happens · Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 1:44 am Post subject:

Zaron · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

Thanx Sith. So what is ndiswrapper anyway? what does it do? or did you already post that? I didn't read all the posts yet, just the first few, and then replied with the lspci info. I am a complete noob to linux, but my friend uses it quite often and tells me gentoo is very powerful, so I am giving it a try. the istall has been relativly easy, except for the network card thing of course.

Sith_Happens · Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 2:39 am Post subject:

feminista · Apprentice Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 182

It looks like wlan0 isn't actually your interface. Depends on the card, you know. I'm trying to think how I figured it out on my box. I'm thinking it may have been iwconfig, but gentoo LiveCDs don't come with that. Knoppix might, though.

Sith_Happens · Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:02 am Post subject:

feminista · Apprentice Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 182

Oh, silly me. I'm using the RR4 CD, which didn't have it, so I assumed it wasn't on the official ones, which was a silly assumption.

MEtoLinuxNoob · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 55

feminista · Apprentice Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 182

MEtoLinuxNoob · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 55

MEtoLinuxNoob · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 55

Any suggestions?
_________________
I have a 64mb RAM computer that's stuck with Windows ME. I need your help to switch to Gentoo! (Oh yeah and I bought a 512mb stick of RAM the other day)

Zaron · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

ok I am having the same series of problems as Meto. I followed the instructions to the letter. I booted knoppix and set the root, and did everything step by step. the first wierd thing i noticed was that when I used the ndiswrapper for the first time to install the inf, it said that it was already installed, which is really wierd. they shouldn't already be intstalled. then i did the modprobe install with no errors. but then I tried to get a listing of my network card with both the iwconfig command and the ifconfig. neither of them said i had anything other than lo and eth0 installed. what is going on?

Ok now I want to know a couple of other things as well. I had followed the guide already to the point where I had made my partitions and mounted them, but when I looked inside my disks after I loaded from knoppix I saw no directories in my home pertition and only a boot folder in my boot partition with nothing in it. why is that? I thought I had made a /mnt/gentoo directory?!

what is the naming scheme for one's hard drives? would'nt it just be easier to just copy all needed files to the hard drive? I thought that's where they were going. to /mnt/gentoo. if I finally get my network going, when the compiler is downloading the source code, where is it going? it can't go to the CD, so it either went to a temporary directory on the hard drive without me knowing, and I hate that, or it's loading everything into RAM, which my comp could probably do considering I have a gig of RAM, but they can't assume that everyone can do that, so that's not an option. I hate not knowing what is going on in my comp. if a program is gonna make a dir on it's own, it should at least tell me if not let me choose where to put it and whether or not I want to save the contents.

MEtoLinuxNoob · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 55

Welcome to Gentoo. The most UN-user-friendly linux installation EVER. Well, maybe I'm overexaggeratting. But after about 3 days of fiddling with error messages and commands and going back and forward through Knoppix to Gentoo and running up and down my stairs between computers to write commands and error messages to post on the forums. After printing 200 pages worth of paper and giving my butt sores from excessive computer-chair-sitting I feel like a true Linux wanna-be.
_________________
I have a 64mb RAM computer that's stuck with Windows ME. I need your help to switch to Gentoo! (Oh yeah and I bought a 512mb stick of RAM the other day)

Zaron · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

see, I don't want to do the rest of the gentoo install under knoppix. I just want to create the proper modules for the kernel out of my windows file with ndiswrapper, copy those files to my hard disk, then reboot onto my gentoo live cd, install the module, have my network work, and continue with the guide as normal.

this is really starting to piss me off. because of certain reasons, it's really not possible for me to connect to a wired network, so this network card issue is a real pain in the @#%(butt). I really need a good solution. I am getting to the point where I might just install Ubuntu instead. I dunno. someone please give me a reason not too.

MEtoLinuxNoob · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 55

Agh, I'm getting to the point where I just give up and go back to ME.

ME!!! AGH THE OPERATING SYSTEM OF DEATH!

The only reason I want to use Gentoo is because its SO customizable. I don't care for all of this kernel customization. I just want to be able to MAKE my computer.

Oh yeah, and it also works on 64mb RAM.
_________________
I have a 64mb RAM computer that's stuck with Windows ME. I need your help to switch to Gentoo! (Oh yeah and I bought a 512mb stick of RAM the other day)

Zaron · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

no, see Meto, you are not a Linux wanna-be, at least I don't consider you one, since you did put in that much effort. a wanna-be would'nt try to stick it out that long. and plus, how can you be a wanna-be to an operating system? an OS is just software that runs in the background to let you do stuff. and this installation is probably the most complicated thing you will ever encounter in linux. now you CAN be a hacker wanna-be, or a programmer wanna-be, ect, because those are specialized activities.

all in all, from what I have seen so far, gentoo is WORSE than windows when it comes to knowing where stuff is going. I think the directory arrangement is just plain confusing. I mean, you need a mount directory on one disk in order to see your other disks? I always thought My Computer was nice and simple. and between the computer management tools and regedit, knowing what's going on in windows XP is not that hard.

as a note, since I started using windows XP, the OS itself has never crashed on me, and only certain progams like games crash on me when I start messing around with them installing mods and whatnot. just thougt I'd throw that out there.

MEtoLinuxNoob · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 55

Yes.

You see, people like to bash Windows too much. But look at us. If we were all using Windows we wouldn't have to worry about internet connections, wireless LAN cards, filesystems, kernels, or mounting and unmounting. All of this seems a little excessive.

Linux will never become "big" until it forces itself to become user friendly. If I can't install it (i'm pretty good with computers) then how is some 50 year old maid suppose to install it?

I'm sure Gentoo is a work of art. But what is a work of art if none of us get to see it?

I'm becoming so discouraged by all of these error messages. It's driving me insane!!!
_________________
I have a 64mb RAM computer that's stuck with Windows ME. I need your help to switch to Gentoo! (Oh yeah and I bought a 512mb stick of RAM the other day)

Zaron · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

well, Meto, we have 2 easy options. we can either use the universal CD and follow the guide to do a network install without a network connection from stage 3, or we can install Ubuntu Linux instead. I strongly suggest doing whatever you have too to NOT use windows ME. I and several of my friends have had really bad experiences with ME. it's slow, it crashes often, ect. or get windows XP home or pro. (Pro strongly suggested).

MEtoLinuxNoob · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2005 Posts: 55

Zaron · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

Ubuntu is here http://ubuntulinux.org/. I don't know if it can run on 64mb of ram or not. I never had to worry about that so I didn't read into it. you should though.

Zaron · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 12

actually, all I really wanted Linux for in the first place was to run some emulators and some cool open source linux-only stuff. I didn't mind the idea of a long install from bootstrapping and building my own system, as I thought, (and still think) it would be worth the extra power. but now with this huge roadblock in the way, I am getting tired of chipping at it.

and I think the idea of having 2 operating systems on my comp would be cool.