Wireless Access with DSL

Forum: Networking
Topic: Wireless Access with DSL
started by: Iang

Posted by Iang on Nov. 10 2005,12:58

I'm having great fun and a much trouble getting wireless to work on DSL! I've 3 separate machines:

1. HP desk top Celeron with DLink DWL-520+ PCI card
2. HP Laptop, Intel Centrino
3. Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook, also Intel Centrino
All connected to a DLink Wireless ADSL router.

All work under Windows XP (sorry, but fact!).

2. & 3. work under Knoppix (CD version 10) using the KWiFiManager. 1. doesn't.

None work under DSL.

Using the DSL Control Panel, I've tried to connect to the router with the following results on all machines:

wlanconfig: No wireless network found

Ndiswrapper (using wlan0, channel, SSID, WEP set as for the router): connection failed. This tried only on 1. as I'm not sure where the drivers exist for the Centrino machines.

iwconfig (eth0, other settings as per router): Connection failed

prism2 (wlan0, other settings as per router): system hangs on all machines.

As I appear to have the same problems on all machines, I must be doing something, or not doing something, really obvious, but as a keen, but very new, Linux and DSL user, I don't know what to try next. My intention is to have the older HP desktop (1.) just running DSL for browsing and normal use as it's very slow under Windows and has been attacked on numerous occasions by viruses. DSL appears perfect: small, effective, reliable, but it's useless unless I can get a wireless internet connection running.

Any help greatly appreciated! Please be very specific if I need to use the Konsole as it's all new to me! On the plus side, if you can teach me, you can teach anyone!

Many thanks.

Posted by doobit on Nov. 10 2005,13:43

Please tell us what version of DSL you are using. Secondly, on your laptops, if you do lsmod in a terminal, what is listed?

Posted by Iang on Nov. 10 2005,15:02

Sorry, should have stated the version: DSL-2.0RC1. I originally tried DSL-1.5 with the same results so tried 2.0RC1 as I noticed it had some updates to the WLAN packages.

lsmod lists a lot of details - is there anything specific I should show? I cannot copy & paste from Bash into FLWriter & save the file which I could then paste here. Is there an easy way of getting the bash output of lsmod into a file? Because I have no internet connection under DSL, I have to reboot into Windows & transfer anything via a USB key.

Thanks again!

Posted by doobit on Nov. 10 2005,18:35

If you do su lsmod >/home/dsl/lsmod.txt it will output a text file to your /home/dsl/ directory that you can edit, and copy and past in Beaver or FLwriter.
DSL-2.0RC1 has some differences in the wireless drivers configurations as already reported here by some. I'm using DSL-1.5 successfully wth an Atheros based wireless PCMCIA that is not recognized yet in 2.0RC2, but I'm sure the developers will sort that one out before final release.
Also, did you check the wiki concerning wireless cards that are known to work? I don't know much about the centrino, but it's popular, so I would think something in DSL would make it work somehow. You might also start a separate thread with that question in the subject line once you know exactly what you need to run it.
Also, in another, similar thread, it was suggested to run knoppix with an open terminal so you can see what wireless drivers are loaded, then see if the same is available for DSL.

Posted by Iang on Nov. 10 2005,20:40

OK, the lsmod works, thanks for that - here is the output, generated from an HP Pavilion notebook with Centrino (system 2. in my first post):

dsl@box:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
af_packet 13608 0 (autoclean)
efs 7436 0 (autoclean)
hfs 77248 0 (autoclean)
minix 19816 0 (autoclean)
xfs 507012 0 (autoclean)
reiserfs 169584 0 (autoclean)
ext3 64388 0 (autoclean)
jbd 46804 0 (autoclean) [ext3]
ntfs 50944 0 (autoclean)
msdos 4684 0 (autoclean)
nls_iso8859-1 2844 2 (autoclean)
nls_cp437 4348 1 (autoclean)
i810_audio 25176 1
ac97_codec 12140 0 [i810_audio]
soundcore 3428 2 [i810_audio]
8139too 13800 0
mii 2240 0 [8139too]
crc32 2816 0 [8139too]
serial 52228 0 (autoclean)
ohci1394 22888 0 (unused)
ieee1394 183300 0 [ohci1394]
mousedev 3832 1
hid 22788 0 (unused)
input 3168 0 [mousedev hid]
ds 6536 1
yenta_socket 9700 1
pcmcia_core 39840 0 [ds yenta_socket]
ide-cd 28768 0
rtc 7036 0 (autoclean)
cloop 39204 2
usb-storage 61952 1
usb-uhci 21516 0 (unused)
usbcore 58016 1 [hid usb-storage usb-uhci]
ide-scsi 9040 0
dsl@box:~$

I'll default back to 1.5 until I can solve the issue so it doesn't introduce any more unknowns.

I did check the wiki - the Dlink 520+ does seem a bit of problem and I cannot get that working under Knoppix either, but the Centrino ought to be fairly common & it works fine with Knoppix, configured under the KWiFiManager. I'll dump the DLink 520+ for another card if that proves to be the problem, but the fact that I couldn't get any of them to run made me think the problem was closer to the operator than the hardware/software!

Thanks again.

Posted by doobit on Nov. 10 2005,21:04

I think someone here has made a .dsl for the 2200 drivers. Try a search on this forum site for that thread. Also, and this is interesting, Intel actually has drivers for the IPW2100 for Linux:
< http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/index.php >

Posted by bookman761 on Nov. 11 2005,02:51

I have the same D-link PCI card ) DWL-520+.

I have tried many different methods for several weeks without success.

BTW, I managed to make it work in Puppy Linux with ACX100 drivers that were specific to Puppy Linux kernel. But I would prefer to use DSL. Are there any drivers specific for DSL? Can someone make some?

I would greatly appreciate any help to make this work.

Thanks,
-FG

Posted by Iang on Nov. 11 2005,16:11

There seems to be very good help on the DLink DWL-520+, which uses the TI ACX chipset, here:

< http://www.houseofcraig.net/acx100_howto.php >

I don't really have the time to go through it all, but the instructions look quite clear.

I must admit it's a shame this wireless stuff is so hard to get working under Linux. I'd really like to switch over - every time I get another virus in Windows, I vow to switch to Linux, spend hours fiddling around with it, and then find it's quicker just to re-install Windows - until the next time! One day!

So I'll start a new topic with the DSL wireless challenge!