So, I’m playing around with a few of the “Live” distros - Ubuntu, Knoppix & Mepis.
Thus far, only Mepis has even successfully detected my wireless NIC and installed the driver for it. (Maybe it’s using ndiswrapper or something - not sure as it happens automagically at boot time.)
I want to use the “Live” CDs so I can figure out if I like Linux enough to take the plunge - I don’t want to mess around with re-partitioning my hard drive etc. until I’m sure. Getting networking working is a big part of the evaluation.
Let’s assume Mepis, since it seems the most promising (and it’s the one “Distro chooser” recommended for me )
I followed the instructions here to the letter, but it still doesn’t work. I know the driver & network card are OK because it automatically connects to my neighbor’s network, and I can browse the web through it!
The wrinkle is that I’m using encryption - WEP unfortunately (grumble grumble TiVo and their backwards technology grumble grumble)
So, what happens? When I follow the instructions, go into OS Center etc., I enter the SSID, WEP key and even the channel frequency. I click apply and it says all is OK, but it stays connected to the neighbor’s LAN. I try “stopping” wlan0 (which is where wireless lives according to the config utility) but then it refuses to start again, both through OS Center and even from the command line via ifup.
Does anyone have any ideas at all? I’m ready to ditch it in frustration and go back to XP.
My laptop is an HP ZD7000 with a Broadcom wireless network card. But I’m convinced this is a “software” or configuration thing, since it works fine with the neighbor’s (unencrypted) LAN.
Someone must have an idea about this? I know there are some Linux experts on here. Would I have an easier time actually biting the bullet and installing Mepis?
Somewhere, there should be a config file. Some distros that use ifup put them in /etc/sysconfig/networking-scripts. Maybe yours does, too. In there, will be file called ifcfg-wlan0
Maybe you could set the SSID and the Key in there. Maybe the ifup command, which uses those variables and passes them to ifconfig and iwconfig, is using the defaults instead of your settings.
ifconfig wlan0 down
pkill dhcpcd
iwconfig wlan0 essid “my ssid here” key “my encryption key here”
iwconfig wlan0 (make sure they are correct)
dhcpcd wlan0
Sometimes, when I set the key the SSID would get unset. That’s why I had to check.
Your distro, if it uses ifup, will probably not have dhcpcd. Replace that with dhcpcd with ifup.
I’m not sure exactly which step did it, but after trying the advice above and everything else I could find about “MEPIS and wireless”, and rebooting, it works. I guess it’s not just Windows that has a reboot fetish.
I’ve been disappointed with a lot of the GUI administration tools. When they work, they work well but when they don’t work it can be a nightmare figuring out what the distro maintainer did while he or she was trying to be clever.
I’m geeky enough that I don’t mind doing the troubleshooting, but the ease and simplicity of Windows and OSX get deserved admiration from this Unix geek.
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