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#1 2009-07-25 02:08:17

ahndoruuu
Member
Registered: 2009-07-25
Posts: 10

Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

So I've been using Ubuntu for about two months now, and I had heard very good things about Arch on their forums, as I'm really a tinkerer at heart and would value the ability to build an OS entirely suited to me, so I figured I'd try it out.

I just went through the Arch install process *with the help of the Beginner's Guide, of course* and got the base system installed, however there was no working network connection, I was given an "unknown host" error message when I tried to ping Google.  The thing is, during install I didn't add/change anything in the /etc/hosts.deny, /etc/hosts.allow, /etc/hosts, or etc/resolv.conf, as the instructions were somewhat vague and I know very little about these kinds of things.  I'm running a Linksys Wireless PCI WMP54GS card (has a Broadcom chipset) which I have to use ndiswrapper for in Ubuntu.  When installing packages in Arch, I installed the ndiswrapper packages because I thought I'd need them. 

So basically my question is do I need to edit any of those files? And did I need to install the ndiswrapper packages?

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#2 2009-07-25 06:14:14

djszapi
Member
From: Cambridge, United Kingdom
Registered: 2009-06-14
Posts: 1,439
Website

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

Welcome to the forum Ahndoruuu!

You can use ndiswrapper too, and It's not neccesary to edit that files in normal case.

What encryption do you use? Is your card in iwconfig? Which dhcp client do you use ? dhclient or dhcpcd ? Which version of kernel/driver?

Btw, did you read this ?
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup

And this if you have WPA encryption:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/WPA_Supplicant
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ndi … supplicant

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#3 2009-07-25 06:57:36

ahndoruuu
Member
Registered: 2009-07-25
Posts: 10

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

Thanks!

Well since I have no network connection currently, I'm stuck at the virtual console; I'm not too command-line savvy quite yet so I'm not sure how I would even use ndiswrapper unfortunately =/ Or would it be better to use b43-fwcutter? I think that would work with my card too. But I have no idea how to run these things.

My network uses WEP encryption.
Yeah it shows up in iwconfig as wlan0 I think but I don't think it recognizes correctly.

uhh what's a dhcp client? not too familiar with that.

The kernel is the one that comes with the most recent liveCD, not sure on the exact version #.

I still have quite a bit to learn it looks like.

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#4 2009-07-25 07:28:44

djszapi
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From: Cambridge, United Kingdom
Registered: 2009-06-14
Posts: 1,439
Website

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

The kernel is the one that comes with the most recent liveCD, not sure on the exact version #. -> uname -r command

Please read these wiki pages:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/WPA_Supplicant
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ndi … supplicant

Why do you use unsecure wep conenction ? Didn't you heard about wep-hack, aircrack-ng ? smile) Do your hardware support it only ? Can you set  WPA encryption instead of that WEP ?

If you're not familiar with console handling, wicd, and network manager would be better for you.

Please read these pages too:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wicd
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NetworkManager

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#5 2009-07-25 21:19:31

ahndoruuu
Member
Registered: 2009-07-25
Posts: 10

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

Well I've read the documentation you linked to, and I think I'm going to have to re-install Arch because I didn't install the "wireless_tools" package and without a network I can't get it from the repositories.  Is this still needed if I'm going to be using ndiswrapper?

Additionally, would it be possible to mount my Ubuntu partition, navigate to where the Windows drivers are that I need for ndiswrapper, and copy them over to the Arch partition? If so what commands would I need?

I use WEP because that's just how the router was set up, I can't/don't want to change it because my parents use the network too and they might get mad because they won't understand what I'm doing.

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#6 2009-07-25 22:19:18

rusty99
Member
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 253

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

You said in your first post that you haven't gone near /etc/hosts etc, I'd advise setting /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf if you haven't done so, it will save a whole host of issues.
If a file called wireless is in /etc/conf.d/ then wireless_tools is installed.

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#7 2009-07-25 22:21:28

ahndoruuu
Member
Registered: 2009-07-25
Posts: 10

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

When you say "setting" them, what exactly do you mean?  I've read through the beginner's guide but I'm still not sure what it's telling me to put in those files.

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#8 2009-07-25 22:36:34

rusty99
Member
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 253

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

In /etc/rc.conf there's the HOSTNAME="xxx" (myhost by default iirc) you need to add that to the end of the line in /etc/hosts ie

127.0.0.1        localhost.localdomain    localhost    myhost

If your isp supplies you with a static ip address you'll more than likely want to put your routers address in /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 192.168.1.1 # for example

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#9 2009-07-25 23:25:17

ahndoruuu
Member
Registered: 2009-07-25
Posts: 10

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

Alright, I added the hostname to the end of the line, so it now looks like:

127.0.0.1        localhost.localdomain    localhost    4XKB91

Is that all that I needed to do?


Additionally, I copied over the Windows driver files needed for ndiswrapper to the /home folder of Arch after mounting the drive in Ubuntu (I have a tri-boot setup at the moment) and tried to install them, but got a weird error message:

[root@4XKB91]# ndiswrapper -i WMP54GS.inf
                      couldn't open WMP54GS.inf: no such file or directory at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 219

I then opened up /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper with nano and poked around a bit but didn't see anywhere where it told me to add the driver name.  Am I doing something wrong?

Last edited by ahndoruuu (2009-07-26 00:06:41)

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#10 2009-07-26 00:15:09

ahndoruuu
Member
Registered: 2009-07-25
Posts: 10

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

God, I'm an idiot.  I forgot to specify the PATH to the freaking driver, AND I accidentally copied the driver files to the /home folder on the root partition instead of into the separate home partition -___-

Got the drivers installed okay. When I entered "ndiswrapper -l"

it informed me that ssb was an alternate driver, so I entered "rmmod b43" and "rmmod ssb"

Now in iwconfig it shows up properly but it gives this for ESSID:

ESSID: off/any

Is it supposed to say that? And if so how do I connect to one?

Last edited by ahndoruuu (2009-07-26 00:38:15)

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#11 2009-07-26 02:05:05

ahndoruuu
Member
Registered: 2009-07-25
Posts: 10

Re: Wireless PCI Card need Config at install?

UPDATE: Okay, I've been reading around and trying some stuff out and I got the drivers installed with ndiswrapper, which informs me that alternate driver is ssb. Not sure if I need to disable it or not.  But this is the series of commands I've entered and the results

ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory

iwconfig wlan0 essid "THBU7" key xxxxxxxxxx *omitted for privacy's sake*

dhcpcd wlan0
wlan0: dhcpcd 4.0.10 start
wlan0: read_interface "no such file or directory"

ping -c 3 www.google.com
ping: unknown host www.google.com

iwconfig

wlan0    IEEE 802.11bg    ESSID: "THBU7"  
Mode: Managed Frequency: 2.412GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power= 0dBm
Retry min limit= 7  RTS thr: off   Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key: xxxx-xxxx-xx  Security mode: Open
Power Management: off
Link Quality: 0  Signal level: 0  Noise level: 0
RX invalid nwid: 0  Rx invalid crypt: 0  Rx invalid frag: 0
# Excessive retires= 0  Invalid misc: 0  Missed beacon= 0

So after those commands it still hasn't connected...what should I do from here?

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