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Topic: Wireless profiles for different locations?, Need to run wlcardconfig each time?

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yangmusa

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Posts: 54
Joined: Aug. 2007

Posted: Aug. 22 2007,21:38

I got wifi configured without too much trouble, thanks to this group.

However, I move my laptop between home and my office. And so far, I can't work out any other way than running wlcardconfig each time I move, which takes time and really shouldn't be necessary. My mac stores all my locations, so I can just choose from a drop down menu, and I'm sure even Windoze can do this.

Is there some way to pass options to wlcardconfig from the command line? That way, I guess I could set up a script to do this.. That is, unless you know of a better way?

thanks, Magnus

roberts

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Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Aug. 22 2007,21:45

If you use one of the stock configuration tools, iwconfig, prism2, ndiswrapper, it creates a script for you. Renaming such and you have it. In v4.0 I just double click the appropriate icon depending on location.

yangmusa

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Posts: 54
Joined: Aug. 2007

Posted: Aug. 22 2007,22:09

Quote (roberts @ Aug. 22 2007,14:45)

Could you go into a little more detail? I'm afraid I'm still wet behind the ears, and everything I know about linux and wifi comes from this forum. Specifically what I do is (as root):

ifconfig ath0 up # activate the card
iwlist ath0 scan # scan for active networks (unless I'm in a known location)
wlcardconfig # if changing locations
pump -i ath0 # acquire ip address through DHCP.

DSL recognizes my Netgear card as ath0 out of the box, so I don't need ndiswrapper or prism2, right? Before I found instructions to the above, I tried running iwconfig, but I don't really know what it does and it never seems to save any of the settings I put in.

thanks, Magnus

roberts

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Posts: 4983
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Aug. 22 2007,22:24

I use iwconfig with my ath0 device, enter ath0 instead of the default eth0.
Your lucky your card can scan, many of the older ones (ones I have) cannot.
Enter your network name in the sid field and enter your wep, if any, as colon separated pairs, e.g., 11:22:33:44.
Using "" in the sid field usually connects to the strongest (local unencrypted) signal.
Upon a sucessful connection you get a myiwconfig script created, in v3.x it is in /opt, with v4.0 it is in home with a nice icon.

Since you are using manual commands it would probably be just as easy to enter them into your own script.

yangmusa

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Posts: 54
Joined: Aug. 2007

Posted: Aug. 22 2007,22:50

Quote (roberts @ Aug. 22 2007,15:24)

Upon a sucessful connection you get a myiwconfig script created, in v3.x it is in /opt, with v4.0 it is in home with a nice icon.

ok, so I ran
sudo ifconfig ath0 up

Then I ran iwconfig instead of wlcardconfig (I assume it _IS_ instead of, since they seem to do the same thing?). This seemed to work the first time - the lights on the card starting blinking together as if it was connected. Then it dropped back to them blinking out of sync. I tried running "sudo pump -i ath0" but that failed, and attempts to browse the web failed.

Even though I didn't get connected, iwconfig did generate a script in /opt - it looked fairly sensible to me, so I've saved it to include in my script. At least I will once I get it working properly..

I don't know if this is due to the SID and WEP key for my office network, which contains several words with spaces in between? I'll try again at home, which has an easier name/wep. BTW - I enter the password using 's:' followed by the password in ascii. If that is likely to be the problem, how would I change the password to HEX?

thanks, Magnus

9 replies since Aug. 22 2007,21:38

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