[BozemanLUG] User question about wireless on Slackware

[Scott Dowdle]

Greetings,

I received the following as a comment on the BozemanLUG January 2010 meeting announcement page on the MontanaLinux.org site.  I didn't think it would get noticed much there and it wasn't really a good place for it, so I emailed the person and asked them to join the mailing list... and am pasting their post below in hopes that someone will be able to offer them some assistance / information.

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From: Mark DeOpsomer
Subject: Configuring wireless NIC on Slackware Linux

Ok, I'm new to Linux, but know UNIX quit well from a developers perspective in the cellular / telecommunications world.

I'm trying to configure wireless on my Gateway / Intel laptop (Slackware Linux rel 13). 
(linux 2.6.29.6-smp)

>From the reading I've done on the Internet here's the procedure I've come up. 

1) First make sure the kernel supports the wireless card. Using "lsmod" shows some Intel stuff, but I'm not sure the name of the module for "INTEL's WiFi Link 5100 wireless card", however, I continue... 

Next I check some of the settings on my ACTIONTEC/DSL wireless box. I have everything turned off, it's wide open (no WEP, or password). So all I need to do is setup ESSID, CHANNEL and start up the wlan0 interface.

Since "iwlist wlan0 scan" sees cells out there, I'm assuming this the kernel has the right module.

Here's the commands I ran:

# configure the wlan ESSID & CHANNEL 
/usr/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid ACTIONTEC
/usr/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 channel 1

# start the wlan0 interface
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_start

Then I execute the following cmds to check out the wlan0 operation.

#iwlist wlan0 scan 

"iwlist" - reports seeing two CELL's in my neighborhood. One is my ACTIONTEC the other is the sunrise campground across the street.

#ifconfig - reports that the wlan0 interface is "UP" and shows packets RX/TX. It also shows wlan0 has been assigned an IP via DHCP (which was turned on via the rc.inet1.conf file)

#iwconfig shows ESSID="ACTIONTEC", but I don't see a channel associated with it? I'm not sure if
that is needed. 

I try and ping addresses out on the internet and it just says "unknown host". 

What is missing here? What other cmds can be used to display interesting data?

Thanks,
Mark

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TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
704 Church Street
Belgrade, MT 59714
(406)388-0827 [home]
(406)994-3931 [work]