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Help me set up my wireless network in SuSE 9.1!

M

MournSanity

Diamond Member
My router is the D-Link DI-614+ enhanced 2.4 Ghz wireless router.
I forgot which model my adapter is, but it is also a D-Link 802.11b Airplus PCI adapter.

When SUSE is loading up, is stops when it gets to my adapter, which I named wlan0 and says "waiting for mandatory device" or something like that. Then it counts down from 20 and it says it failed to initialize. On the right, it says "failed" in bold red letters. Then it boots up as usual.

I tried configuring it in YaST but I don't know if I did everything correctly. I tried to fill in everything it told me to and I tried it that way. It didn't work. Then I configured it to get most of the stuff from DCHP. Doesn't work.

I went into KDE and checked out it's wifi tool. There is no connection to anything, and right over the picture of a wireless adapter is a red question mark, obviously indicating that my adapter hasn't been initialized or something.

I installed Linux because I felt that since the last time I tried it, it might have progressed to the point where it would be usuable as a secure alternative to Windows. I also felt it would be a good time to learn Linux as it would be helpful when I take my computer science course next year. But it hasn't worked the way I want it to. I'm sure if a regular Linux user was here with me, he would be able to solve my problem no problem. Too bad I know nobody else who runs Linux 🙁 That is why I need your help.

***** The first person to help me solve my problem gets a gmail invite 😀 *****

Also, remember, I am a total Linux noob, therefore I don't know how to use things like the terminal let alone how to compile something. Thats what I'm trying to LEARN.





OLD POST, KEEP READING DOWN IN THE THREAD


I think the main thing that is stopping me from jumping on the Linux bandwagon is that in the past I haven't been able to surf the net on my Linux distros mainly because I connect with a wireless adapter to the net.
Are there currently any distros out that that automatically support wireless networks with little to no hassle setting it up?
 
They should support some wireless network equipment out of the box. I know it wasn't hard to setup in OpenBSD.
 
Ok, I installed SuSE Linux 9.1 on my computer, and, as expected with a Linux noob, I can't get onto the internet. SuSE detected my wireless adapter fine (thank God!) but I think there are some settings I have to set up. I tried to configure my adapter as best I could in the YaST tool, putting in my IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway, but I still can't get connected tot he internet. Is there any specific documentation out there that tells you how exactly to connect to the internet with a wireless network?


BTW: GNOME is fvcking awesome!
 
KDE supposedly has a wireless config tool: kwifimanager
This looks like it has some nice information: Here

That should get you started. 🙂
 
In general, 802.11g is not well supported yet in Linux ... I have a g router and I had to bump the speed down to b. Once I did that, it solved all my problems. Also, I had to play with the channels, I had to have mine on channel 1 for some reason. You just have to play around with it until 802.11g gets better support.
 
I don't have a g router. It's a b.

Anyways, I just played around with the settings in Yast and I still can't get it to work. I also played with that KDE wifi tool with the same results. BUT I think I know why I can't connect to the internet; Yast isn't considering my wireless adapter as an ethernet card. When I go into yast trying to set up a DSL connection, I set it up as PPPoE, etc. But then it tells me to select the ethernet card but it doesn't show my wireless card. But I can select my nforce2 ethernet adapter just fine. To test out something I created a new wireless card configuration called wan0 and it still would not show up when I tried to select it. WTF is up with that? Why does it let me select ethernet cards but not wireless cards, even though they both go under network cards when I configure them?
 
Originally posted by: hypersonic5
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
You don't do PPPoE over wireless.
Click to expand...

What should I choose then? I do PPPoE over wireless on Windows....
Click to expand...

Really? Ew. Why not have the router do PPPoE and then just connect to it normally from the hosts?
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: hypersonic5
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
You don't do PPPoE over wireless.
Click to expand...

What should I choose then? I do PPPoE over wireless on Windows....
Click to expand...

Really? Ew. Why not have the router do PPPoE and then just connect to it normally from the hosts?
Click to expand...

Maybe that is what it's doing. I'm not an expert at all about networking, especially wireless networking.
 
I connect wireless at work with SuSE 9.1. I have to shutdown both eth1 and eth0 before bringing up my wireless care (eth1).

From a shell (as root) try:
ifdown eth1
ifdown eth0
ifup ethx (fill in your wireless card #)

What do you get when you type 'iwconfig'?

 
I think my wireless adapter is failing to initialize. I set it to do so at boot up, but it just counts down to zero and then tells me it failed. How do you manually try to start it up?

This is why it sucks to be a Linux noobie.
 
Woah! I found this guide that tells you how to setup a wireless card using the same chipset as mine 🙂 I'm gonna go try this. Hopefully it will work 🙂
 
I think I figured out my problem. I followed everything in that guide and installed the drivers correctly, but my adapter wouldn't associate with my router. In the terminal I used 'iwlist wlan0 scan' which gave me the error message: interface doesn't support scanning. I think something is not letting my network card scan for available routers. When I try to ping my router, it fails 100%. ifconfig shows 00.00.00.00.00 for the access point, signifying it isn't there.

Can anybody who has set up a wireless adapter or know about this stuff help me solve this and make my adapter be able to scan the frequencies for a router?
 
open up a terminal.

type:
su -

to become root. Normally you just use "su", but when you add the - on the end it makes sure that you have the correct enviromental settings for root. Such as the $PATH variable.

type:
ifconfig -a

You should have a entry for every interface. lo for loopback. Eth0 for your eithernet interface. My wireless card comes up as eth1, yours may come up as wlan0.

Type:
iwconfig

That will go thru the possible network connections and see if they support the wireless extensions. If it finds a wireless card it will show the settings. Use the name of whatever it finds.

I'll assume your is wlan0.

ifdown eth0
ifdown wlan0

And that should work, if it doesn't do this:

ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig wlan0 down

That will make sure that you have both interfaces down.

You manually setup your wireless card thru iwconfig utility. Read the man file, to do that you go "man iwconfig"
Here are the generic steps.

iwconfig wlan0 ESSID "your network name"

That will set the ESSID name for your network.

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed

or you might try

iwconfig wlan0 mode Auto

On my network I have a key that I use. It's 0123456789

So I go:

ifconfig wlan0 key 0123456789

That's exactly how it's transmitted. So if you have it encrypted send it in it's encrypted form.

There are a lot of other settings you can try out (for instance the frequency/channel or nwid/domain if you use that instead of or in addition of essid) , but that's I need for it to latch onto the AP. That takes care of the "physical layer"

When your finished with the command it will automaticly scan for a AP that will work with the ESSID and key or whatever other settings you need.

Once its finished (give it a minute) it should latch onto the correct AP and when you run iwconfig it should show the AP's MAC address in your settings. This is what shows in my settings:

IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"basement"
Mode:Managed Channel:10 Access Point: 00:04:E2:64:B2:86
Bit Rate:54Mb/s Tx-Power=31 dBm Sensitivity=20/200
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Link Quality:210/0 Signal level:-46 dBm Noise level:-183 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


Then if you have dhcp setup on your network you go (differs from distro to distro)

dhcpcd wlan0
dhclient wlan0

If you don't then you go:

ifconfig wlan0 your.ip.address up
route add default gw your.gateway.address

Then make sure that in /etc/resolv.conf make sure that you have your DNS server ip address in their. Have a line like:

nameserver your.dns.server's.address

After you get all the settings right, then you can then add them to the gui configuration tools. However I prefer just to copy and past the commands i use to get it working into a file, add #!/bin/bash into the first line, and make it executable.

Then I run that script as a command whenever I want my wireless stuff to work. But whatever.

 
SUCCESS!

I have set up my wireless internet and I am now surfing the net in SUSE Linux. I did this by setting my mode to Auto. Then I scanned for wireless routers and it found mine and now it works. I have some problems with Linux though:

1. Whenever I restart my computer, I have to do those steps over again to get back on the internet. I did what drag said at the end but it doesn't work.

2. How do I change the screen resolution in the command line, the graphical configuration totally screwed it up. It's 1280x1024 even though it says 1024x768. I need to set the screen rez to 1024x768x24 @ 85hz.

3. I downloaded the tarbell for firefox. How would I go about installing it?

Anyways, thanks for all the help guys. And drag, if you want a gmail account, PM me with your email address.
 
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