Wireless configuration and startup - The Gentoo way (part 2)

[nyne]

I am using wpa_supplicant with ndiswrapper to connect to my wireless lan at home (802.11g linksys/cisco AP using WPA/PKI)... if i boot up my machine from home it logs right on to the wireless lan, however if i go anywhere else I have to wait for wpa_supplicant to time out and manually run dhcpcd wlan0 in order to gain network connectivity.. is there a way to automate this or a fix i am oblivious to?

here is my wpa_supplicant.conf

[UberLord]

afaik the problem is that you need a "default AP with no encryption" which wpa_supplicant doesn't support.

However, the iwconfig does allow this - but you can only use no encryption or WEP - nothing else.

[nyne]

hmmm

so my best bet would be start editing init scripts to attempt to grab an ip address via dhcpcd if wpa_supplicant fails? or create a different runlevel that only uses iwconfig and pass some sort of grub parameter?
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Fortune Favours the Brave.

[UberLord]

That I don't know - you're talking about different network profiles.

quickswitch supports this and it's in portage - but I've never tried it.

[kevlinsky]

First, I'd like to thank UberLord for the HOWTO article. Unfortunately, I have a problem:
I do not have the wireless.example file. I remerged wireless-tools, figuring maybe it got deleted, but still nothing. I'd rather use iwconfig to manipulate my wireless than using wpa-supplicant.

[UberLord]

[epohs]

[viperlin]

i beleve the problem is that you havnt installed dhcpd.............................................................................

i thought i covered that allready

[frozenJim]

Listen all, I don't want to be flamed here, nor am I trying to flame our hard-working Gentoo developers - But SOMEBODY really ought to post an "OFFICIAL GENTOO WIRELESS HOW-TO".

After reading through hundreds - if not more - posts on this topic, I STILL haven't decided if there is a right way to install my wireless card.

Just when I think I have it, the next post says "but that is now discontinued..." or "this is now included in the xxxx package".

It's great that we can all emerge and then unmerge and then monkey around and then pray... but I like to use Gentoo and still have a stable environment (which is largely why I left Micro$oft in the first place). As someone just jumping into the Gentoo-wireless fray, I have to say it appears extremely frightening. 100 different ways to do it, THIS thread calls itself the "OFFICIAL GENTOO" thread, but it isn't really - a point strongly pointed out by uberlord to the LAST guy who asked this question.

WHERE do I go to find the STANDARD WIRELESS INSTALL FOR GENTOO?

I know it's wordy, but I have read a few others get flamed for posing this same question - a VALID question - a question that really deserves a straight answer.

If I knew HOW to install my wireless card on Gentoo, I would offer to write the HOW-TO. But since I have absolutely NO IDEA where to begin due to the conflicting threads and 100% lack of documentation on the Gentoo.org site, I cannot.

Surely wireless networking isn't THAT cutting edge?

OK, my asbestos suit is on... I await a reply (but I'm still using my cat-5 to do it!)
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[BaXi]

I've just setup baselayout 1.11.xx without any troubles at all. My cable network is setup and ready to go but my wireless doesn't seem to find any AP's but iwlist eth1 scanning spits out quite a few. I've tried the "any any any" method in /etc/conf.d/wireless but this is my current setup.
/etc/conf.d/wireless

[epohs]

[viperlin]

[UberLord]

[UberLord]

[UberLord]

[frozenJim]

Uber- you are the UBEREST!

I was just getting back to EDIT my post - I found your wiki entry (easy once I realized that 'readline' wasn't emerging so I searched google for 'readline AND baselayout' - bingo - your wiki page!).

Thanks for the perfectly painless reply, and for exactly the answer that I - and many, many others - needed.

If we can just get a link to your wiki page listed in www.gentoo.org/docs/en then I suspect that a whole PILE of frustrated folk with no network connectivity will love you.

Anywho, thx. My emerge is plodding along now just fine.
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Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.

[mope]

Things that aren't covered in that howto that I desperately need are trouble-shooting FAQ.

For example, I've been trying to handle a problem with either /etc/init.d/net.ath0 start coming back as no ath0 found or no response at all. Neither case is wireless working, though.

On my main box, I have the same kernel, same .config, and afaik, same packages emerged but no wireless on two and wireless on the main one. I can't figure this out and it's really pissing me off since I've been wasting my time for over 6 months now.

I used to have wireless-tools setup, but now I just changed over to wpa_supplicant.
On one computer this worked fine and the same two that have always given me problems, I have no idea. On one, it's a laptop with a card and one is a desktop.

Both are using d-link cards: dwl-g650 on the lappy and dwl-g520 on the two desktops.

All of them are the newest revision and use madwifi-drivers.
I don't even know where to begin because there are so many instructions floating around. But when I first started trying (and eventually got my main desktop to work) I used this thread.

[groover]

Hi there,

I did not really read this whole thread, but it seemed to me that this question was not asked, so it was not answered.

I have an ipw2100 driven wireless interface eth1.
I used to fire my network interface up using a python script of my own.
There are 5 wireless networks I frequently use, and as I decided to let Gentoo control my wireless connections, there was some problem after configuring /etc/conf.d/wireless.

eth1 itself works, wireless connection to my wrt54gs (Linksys router/ap) works fine, I use WEP encryption and don't broadbast my ESSID.

/etc/init.d/net.eth1 (symlinked to net.lo) works fine, in case I use essid_eth1="Streik", but not anymore if I set up essid_eth1="any". This is really annoying!

Perhaps some problems with my configuration files (don't think so),

my /etc/conf.d/net: // this works fine within my little network

[UberLord]

[groover]

Um, okay, as I said, and as I said sorry, again, but...

[UberLord]

[groover]

Alright, now I got it,

thanks a lot.

I think my failure was, that I only tried to comment out essid_eth1="any" (or an ESSID name) once, and this was as there were'nt configured any preferred_aps.

Sorry for my stupidity, or so,

and again thanks a lot,

kraM
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[jhboricua]

I followed the Wireless wiki how to and after some monkeying around got my wireless card to come up. But I'm running into a problem. First, here's my configs:

/etc/conf.d/net

[golgo13]

I'm thuroughly confused. Am I supposed to be using /etc/conf.d/net or /etc/conf.d/wireless with ndiswrapper? Looking back in this thread it looks as though I am supposed to use /etc/conf.d/wireless however Uberlord's networking-in-progress handbook http://dev.gentoo.org/~uberlord/net-book/hb_part1_chap4.html only uses /etc/conf.d/net . Right now in /etc/conf.d/net I have:

[UberLord]