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#1 2010-12-24 04:11:35

phlaaj
Member
Registered: 2010-12-24
Posts: 13

Pre-Installation Wireless Set-up Questions

Hi all,

I am an Arch noob for sure, as I am sure some of the following questions will reveal. I have been using Crunchbang (a Ubuntu variant) for about a year now though, so not completely new to Linux. Anyways, I am thinking about installing Arch sometime within the next few days, and was reading through the Beginners' Guide, Wiki, and forums, and I am a bit unclear about a couple points in the installation process. As these questions concern wireless set-up, I thought I would ask them now rather than risk messing up my internet connectivity during install. I very much appreciate any help, and I am very much looking forward to switching to Arch smile

1. In the Networking section of /etc/rc.conf, the guide says to "list all interfaces" next to INTERFACES=. Question is, how do I find which "all interfaces" I have? If so, do I actually list them all? Also, if there are interfaces besides eth0, do I need to list them separately above INTERFACES= (like how eth0= is a separate line)? If so, should they all be set to "dhcp"? I will need to use wireless to connect to a WPA2-protected network through a router, if this info helps at all.

2. If I will be using DHCP (which I plan to as I have a laptop), do I need to change the IP address in /etc/hosts during installation? If so, do I change it to "dhcp"?

3. The guide says to uncomment the "locale(s) you need" in /etc/locale.gen. How do I determine which locales I need? Do I just choose one corresponding to where I am, or all the locales corresponding to where I am?

4. If my network isn't working on restart, what is the command to re-open and edit configuration files like /etc/rc.conf if I have to?

Thanks for the help!

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#2 2010-12-24 05:53:52

meop
Member
Registered: 2010-11-01
Posts: 31

Re: Pre-Installation Wireless Set-up Questions

Hi,

How you get the wireless card running will vary depending on what type of card it is. Some, like older Broadcom cards, need extra firmware to be downloaded before they can run on Linux, so it will be a pain to install Arch Linux through a wireless card that won't work until Arch Linux is installed and can download the extra firmware.. chicken and egg situation. But lots of cards, especially most new ones, don't have this issue.

1. /etc/rc.conf is used by the init scripts at startup to initialize and pass arguments to network daemons. You'd only want to list names of interfaces if you wanted the same settings applied to them every time Arch starts. You figure out the names of your interfaces with :

$ ifconfig -a

So if you always planned to connect to the same WPA2 wireless network, you could put its parameters in /etc/rc.conf. There are more examples on the https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless page. Personally, I don't use /etc/rc.conf or the `network` daemon for my laptop.. I find it's much easier to use a tool like `wicd`, through the desktop environment, after the laptop finishes booting.. but that's just my preference. For a laptop, if you're going to take it places, hardcoding all the keys of the routers you encounter manually could be a pain.

2. No, /etc/hosts is only for IP resolution, you don't have to touch it for this purpose.

3. Do you plan to be using something other than English? I've never needed to uncomment any extra locales when I install Arch Linux.

4. If your network isn't working, editing /etc/rc.conf and restarting, or restarting the network daemon is a slower way of testing settings. It would be better to use the command line interface, try settings you'd expect to work on the wireless card, like in the manual setup section of the Wireless wiki page.. then when you found the settings that worked, and you wanted them applied every time by a network daemon, use any text editing program you wanted to change /etc/rc.conf.

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#3 2010-12-24 18:39:06

phlaaj
Member
Registered: 2010-12-24
Posts: 13

Re: Pre-Installation Wireless Set-up Questions

meop, thanks so much for the detailed help, that definitely cleared up some questions. I do happen to have a Broadcom card, so I'm looking into the firmware issue - if it's a problem during install, I can always try a wired connection I guess.

1. So after reading through your post, Wireless Setup and WPA Supplicant articles in the wiki, I think I understand it a bit better...basically I only need to worry about rc.conf and manual set-up like the first time during install, just to get a connection so that I can get the system to a point where I can set up more automated tools like wicd or networkmanager right? If I will be using DHCP, the rc.conf will be overwritten by these tools automatically then?

So after running ifconfig -a (on Crunchbang Linux), I get:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:b9:80:b5:7f  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:17 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:7e:b7:77:59  
          inet addr:192.168.1.103  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::219:7eff:feb7:7759/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2513723 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:413939
          TX packets:2081951 errors:18 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2495625924 (2.4 GB)  TX bytes:489406347 (489.4 MB)
          Interrupt:17 Base address:0xc000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:21408 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:21408 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:1589836 (1.5 MB)  TX bytes:1589836 (1.5 MB)

pan0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 1e:c2:b1:78:38:fa  
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

vboxnet0  Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 0a:00:27:00:00:00  
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

None of these look like a wireless interface to me - should I just test each one sequentially by trial-and-error during install?

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#4 2010-12-24 19:14:30

Crazyiom
Member
Registered: 2010-12-23
Posts: 7

Re: Pre-Installation Wireless Set-up Questions

I think, ifconfig does not list the wireless interfaces (I could be wrong) so try iwconfig.

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#5 2010-12-24 19:57:24

phlaaj
Member
Registered: 2010-12-24
Posts: 13

Re: Pre-Installation Wireless Set-up Questions

Crazyiom wrote:

I think, ifconfig does not list the wireless interfaces (I could be wrong) so try iwconfig.

yep, that's it, thanks. Looks like eth1 is my wireless (unless the interfaces change during install), but at least I know how to find that out now, thanks.

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#6 2010-12-24 20:47:04

Crazyiom
Member
Registered: 2010-12-23
Posts: 7

Re: Pre-Installation Wireless Set-up Questions

phlaaj wrote:
Crazyiom wrote:

I think, ifconfig does not list the wireless interfaces (I could be wrong) so try iwconfig.

yep, that's it, thanks. Looks like eth1 is my wireless (unless the interfaces change during install), but at least I know how to find that out now, thanks.

When in the arch live cd you can check as well (just switch tty using alt + f2 and alt + f1 to go back) But I would assume it would not change.

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#7 2010-12-24 22:02:14

meop
Member
Registered: 2010-11-01
Posts: 31

Re: Pre-Installation Wireless Set-up Questions

phlaaj, yes `ifconfig` will list all interfaces; `iwconfig` is specifically for controlling wireless interfaces. The interface name varies depending on the driver for the wireless card as well. Mine has an Atheros chip, I use the ath5k driver, and the interface shows up as 'wlan0' instead of 'eth1'.

1. You don't even have to worry about /etc/rc.conf for the first install. I think you should be fine setting up your wireless card manually with `iwconfig` commands like in the Wiki pages, as long as your Broadcom card doesn't need extra firmware. Then test it with `ping` or something to make sure you can see the internet. Then run the /arch/setup script and select your interface as the one to install through. If you do need extra firmware, then yes it might be quicker to install through the wired interface, then download the firmware, and a more automatic tool like `wicd` if you prefer.

The setup script will ask you (as one of its later steps, when it offers you a chance to edit /etc/rc.conf) whether you want it to try and fill /etc/rc.conf with your current interface settings, like DHCP. I have found this to not work perfectly in the past; it leaves off a bracket or something like that. Either way, you're free to say 'no' and keep the INTERFACES=() line empty like that.

None of the tools ever overwrite /etc/rc.conf once Arch is installed; and they have their own files where they store settings if they need to. Using `wicd` would conflict with the built-in network daemons that do reference /etc/rc.conf for startup settings anyway, so you'd have to disabled them in /etc/rc.conf as well, as on the https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wicd page.

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