Instead of the normal: "How do I?" post, I thought I'd offer up a few details of my weekend waste of time project.
Hardware:
Toshiba Satellite 2540CDS laptop
K6-2 333mhz, 64mb of ram, 4gb drive
Microsoft MN-720 802.11g wireless pcmcia card
The goal was to turn this old machine into a wireless thin client for a Windows Server 2003 machine.
I went with a fairly minimal FC2 install, although there is still a lot of bloat to it. I just elected to install only the X-server (no kde, no gnome), a text editor, and the development tools. The install was still around 1GB, so there is a lot selected behind the scenes.
The first mission was to get the wireless card installed and functioning. First I downloaded and installed ndiswrapper 0.10, and walked through the instructions about 7 times. It was a no go, the drivers were installed and the card was recognized but it refused to get an ip address from the dhcp server. So I uninstalled that and installed ndiswrapper 0.11 rc1, and things were up and running.
Ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper install instructions
ndiswrapper driver compatibility list
I selected the first driver option for the Microsoft MN-720, but instead of creating symlinks, the new ndiswrapper has an option to take care of it for you:
First:
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf (install the drivers)
Then:
ndiswrapper -d 14e4:4325 bcmwl5 (tells ndiswrapper to use the bcmwl5 drivers for a card with pciid 14e4:4325)
The card is recognized and it pulls an ip address without issues.
Then its:
ndiswrapper -m
and ndiswrapper loads on boot for me.
The next part was adding WPA support. The solution here is wpa_supplicant. I used wpa_supplicant 0.2.4, following these instructions: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/WPA
The only difficulty I've run into is that I can't get wpa_supplicant to work with SSID broadcast disabled on my wireless router. wpa_supplicant says "No suitable AP found," but with WPA enabled and MAC filtering, I don't feel too bad about having the SSID being broadcast.
I created a quick script to take care of starting dhclient and wpa_supplicant that I run after I log in, and within 5 seconds everything connects, I get an IP address, and I'm zooming around the net and my local lan.
So now I have my "secure" wireless network working, and its time to connect to the windows server. I used the latest CVS build of rdesktop as it adds a few features when connecting to a Windows Server 2003 machine. Specifically I needed the "-0" switch to connect in console mode. Rdesktop install was a breeze:
./configure
make
make install
and its ready to roll.
The important part is the results:
When I had WinXP loaded on the laptop, the boot time was ~7minutes from power on until drive activity died down and the laptop was useful. Even turning off all the eye-candy and most of the features, mem swapping was pretty bad in windows (justified of course, this thing does only have 64mb of ram).
Now from power on until the text login prompt is 1minute 40 seconds, with 10 of those being a bootloader delay while is present an option to load an older kernel. Once I login in, I run the network script to start dhclient and wpa_supplicant, and 5 seconds later the wireless network is working. Then I do a "startx" to load TWM, and in the xterm that's given I can launch rdesktop. In under 2minutes and 30seconds from power on, I basically have the equivalent of a modern windows desktop on a machine that wasn't up to the task by itself. The drive doesn't thrash around, and its a generally positive experience when I'm lounging on the couch surfing and sending around a few IMs.
Was there a real point to this?
Not really, but I have a trial version of Windows Server 2003 SBS running headless in a corner of the basement, so why not? The wireless stuff should work pretty much on any distro, and that's the important part. Linux does have wireless options, including WPA support, and while its still not just plug it in and go, it isn't too difficult. I can now use a laptop that's just been in the corner collect dust, so that's good. Maybe someone else can resurrect a piece of their old hardware. For basic internet/office tasks, the laptop runs better through the remote desktop than it ever did when things were installed locally.
Its also neat that the Microsoft branded wireless card was fairly easy to get running under linux 🙂 (A very nice $15 purchase at Comp-USA the other week.)
Hardware:
Toshiba Satellite 2540CDS laptop
K6-2 333mhz, 64mb of ram, 4gb drive
Microsoft MN-720 802.11g wireless pcmcia card
The goal was to turn this old machine into a wireless thin client for a Windows Server 2003 machine.
I went with a fairly minimal FC2 install, although there is still a lot of bloat to it. I just elected to install only the X-server (no kde, no gnome), a text editor, and the development tools. The install was still around 1GB, so there is a lot selected behind the scenes.
The first mission was to get the wireless card installed and functioning. First I downloaded and installed ndiswrapper 0.10, and walked through the instructions about 7 times. It was a no go, the drivers were installed and the card was recognized but it refused to get an ip address from the dhcp server. So I uninstalled that and installed ndiswrapper 0.11 rc1, and things were up and running.
Ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper install instructions
ndiswrapper driver compatibility list
I selected the first driver option for the Microsoft MN-720, but instead of creating symlinks, the new ndiswrapper has an option to take care of it for you:
First:
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf (install the drivers)
Then:
ndiswrapper -d 14e4:4325 bcmwl5 (tells ndiswrapper to use the bcmwl5 drivers for a card with pciid 14e4:4325)
The card is recognized and it pulls an ip address without issues.
Then its:
ndiswrapper -m
and ndiswrapper loads on boot for me.
The next part was adding WPA support. The solution here is wpa_supplicant. I used wpa_supplicant 0.2.4, following these instructions: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/WPA
The only difficulty I've run into is that I can't get wpa_supplicant to work with SSID broadcast disabled on my wireless router. wpa_supplicant says "No suitable AP found," but with WPA enabled and MAC filtering, I don't feel too bad about having the SSID being broadcast.
I created a quick script to take care of starting dhclient and wpa_supplicant that I run after I log in, and within 5 seconds everything connects, I get an IP address, and I'm zooming around the net and my local lan.
So now I have my "secure" wireless network working, and its time to connect to the windows server. I used the latest CVS build of rdesktop as it adds a few features when connecting to a Windows Server 2003 machine. Specifically I needed the "-0" switch to connect in console mode. Rdesktop install was a breeze:
./configure
make
make install
and its ready to roll.
The important part is the results:
When I had WinXP loaded on the laptop, the boot time was ~7minutes from power on until drive activity died down and the laptop was useful. Even turning off all the eye-candy and most of the features, mem swapping was pretty bad in windows (justified of course, this thing does only have 64mb of ram).
Now from power on until the text login prompt is 1minute 40 seconds, with 10 of those being a bootloader delay while is present an option to load an older kernel. Once I login in, I run the network script to start dhclient and wpa_supplicant, and 5 seconds later the wireless network is working. Then I do a "startx" to load TWM, and in the xterm that's given I can launch rdesktop. In under 2minutes and 30seconds from power on, I basically have the equivalent of a modern windows desktop on a machine that wasn't up to the task by itself. The drive doesn't thrash around, and its a generally positive experience when I'm lounging on the couch surfing and sending around a few IMs.
Was there a real point to this?
Not really, but I have a trial version of Windows Server 2003 SBS running headless in a corner of the basement, so why not? The wireless stuff should work pretty much on any distro, and that's the important part. Linux does have wireless options, including WPA support, and while its still not just plug it in and go, it isn't too difficult. I can now use a laptop that's just been in the corner collect dust, so that's good. Maybe someone else can resurrect a piece of their old hardware. For basic internet/office tasks, the laptop runs better through the remote desktop than it ever did when things were installed locally.
Its also neat that the Microsoft branded wireless card was fairly easy to get running under linux 🙂 (A very nice $15 purchase at Comp-USA the other week.)
