(*vanity*) Looking for Linux help with connecting to the internet (live CD on a laptop)

My Headbone | 7/7/06 | marty fierro

[martin_fierro]

I've tried various flavors of Linux (on live cd) on both desktop and on 3 laptop computers, to wit:

• Ubuntu 6.06
• Knoppix 5.01
• Damn Small Linux 3.0 (Knoppix hack)
• Overclockix 3.79 (Knoppix hack)

By and large none of these Linux versions have any trouble finding the cable modem router & internet when run on desktop PCs.

But none of them seem to be able to find the internet on the 3 laptop PCs running either Linksys PCMCIA 802.11g wireless network cards or Broadcomm internal 802.11 b/g wireless network card. Linux can't seem to find the Broadcomm internal 802.11 b/g wireless network card *at all*.

The router is using 128-bit WEP Encryption, and I've entered the 26-character encryption code in the right place.

Probably I'm not understanding the IP/Subnet/Default Gateway/DNS1/DNS2 configuration settings? Is there a recommended way to set up Linux to run from a live CD on a laptop with a wireless card?

I think I came closest to connecting to the internet via a Linux live CD/laptop with Damn small Linux.

Your input is appreciated.

[martin_fierro]

Linux N00b Ping

[stainlessbanner]

Knoppix works with my wireless card.

You might have to configure NDIS wrapper - this is a little vague, but I've never quite nailed NDIS for systems that don't automatically work.

[stainlessbanner]

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

[Michael Goldsberry]

If, (and I assume it is), a DHCP situation, you shouldn't have to worry about the IP/netmask/gateway/DNS stuff.

Are you getting an IP address?

Give the command "ifconfig -a" to see.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

At the risk of answering a "why can't I do that" question with a "Why would you want to do that?" answer...

You say desktop with those linux distros works fine over ethernet but laptop with those distros doesn't work with 802.11blah.

So have you tried laptop over ethernet? I.e take the wireless card out of the equation? Most likely as you say there are hw issues or as you also say WEP encryption issues.

Another thing to try is 802.11blah with encryption turned off. IOW incremental approach.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

DRiving wireless cards is a known problem with many of the Linux Distos,...was reading the other day where someone felt that the Linux developers needed to get after it, because the BSD guys were doing a much better job....so you might take a look at Free Bsd and Desktop BSD.

Not that much different, both have Firefox , KDE and Open office I believe.

Both desktops are pretty good looking and their software update,.Portage or Ports ,
.....I think it is, is pretty good....However I am no expert .

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I had this running the other day, I just gave him the whole disk and he did the rest:

PC-BSD 1.11 has been released

You aren't trying to do anything like dual boot are you?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

A comparison of BSD live CDs (by Andrei Raevsky)

***********************AN EXCERPT **********************************

GNU/Linux live CDs are increasingly playing an important role in the free software community. They serve as advocacy tools, they make it possible for newbies to try out software without having to install anything and they make fantastic rescue disks. While all the best known live CDs are GNU/Linux variants, there are also several *BSD live CDs out there. I decided to give them a test run.

I tested all the BSD live CDs I could get my hand on: FreeSBIE 1.1, FreeBSD LiveCD 1.2, Frenzy 0.3, AnonymOS 2006, OliveBSD 3.8 and NetBSD Live! 1.6 (editor's note: a newer release of NetBSD Live!, version 3.99.7, is available from here). Each distro was tested on two desktops (a home-built AMD Duron 850MHz, 256MB RAM with generic components and a Hewlett-Packard Intel Celeron 500MHz, 256MB RAM) and two laptops (a Dell Inspiron 8200, Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz and 885MB RAM and a Quantex N30W, Intel Pentium 3 450MHz and 192MB RAM). I pre-tested all my computers for possible problems with a KANOTIX 2005-04 live CD before beginning my evaluations.

First, I wanted to see how these distributions would perform in terms of hardware recognition (in particular video configuration) and smooth installation, ease of use, documentation, speed and overall versatility (capability to dial-up, software choice, etc.). My second goal was to see whether these live CDs would be adequate advocacy tools for free software in general and for *BSD in particular.

FreeSBIE only booted properly on the home-built machine and the Quantex laptop. When it can successfully boot, FreeSBIE offers a great choice of applications on the XFce desktop (Fluxbox is also available), runs rather fast and comes with some good configuration scripts. On the down side, the documentation is minimal and the video configuration is less than stellar.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Worth digging thru this too:

Coming soon: Native Wi-Fi support for Linux...lead article

Not saying it is true...any idea what chip is in your wireless card?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And I find this:

FreeBSD 6.0 to target wireless devices

*******************************************

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ALERT TO MARTIN*********************************

This is a good system...............

**************************************************

OK....I am running VectorLinux on my AMD64 X2 and like its speed even though it is not using both processors,....but their claim to fame is that they are a slackware based distro and have support for those that buy the package.....but you can also download packages....including a Live CD that appears to have some support for some wireless cards....

GO HERE:

VL-5.1 standard live CD final
Posted on Monday 12 June @ 22:10:29

*****************************************

he live edition CD includes everything from VectorLinux standard 5.1 including three full featured desktops Icewm, Fluxbox, and xfce4. There is also a full office suite and many other applications. We have added Gparted for all of your GUI partitioning needs.


The Live-CD installer icon is now on all of the root ROX desktops along with an icon for Gparted.
We have added more options to the hard drive installer including an option for a seperate /home partition, and the ability to choose if, and where to install lilo.
We have added wifi-radar for easy connections to wireless networks, and more wireless drivers and firmware so now even more cards are supported. Cards with ipw2100 and ipw2200 chipsets should now work out of the box.

Updates from 5.1 Standard non-live version include kernel 2.6.15.3, firefox-1.5.0.4, ndiswrapper 1.9, openoffice 2.0, udev 0.71,wifi-radar 1.9.6, Gparted 0.2.4, and its dependancies.
We have decided to fill the empty space on the cd with the kernel source for those of you that need it to build drivers and such.

We would like to thank all the developers, testers, The VectorLinux community, and the developer of linux-live scripts from http://www.linux-live.org.

The LiveCD is available for download here:
ftp:
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/vectorlinux/veclinux-5.0/iso/VL-5.1-std-LIVE.iso

http:
http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/vectorlinux/veclinux-5.0/iso/VL-5.1-std-LIVE.iso

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Discussion on the VL FOrum on setting up Linksys card.....not sure if it worked out but looks like some good issues are raised.:

ndiswrapper hates vl noob...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Another resource:

Wireless Tools for Linux

********************AN EXCERPT ***************************

Presentation

The Linux Wireless Extension and the Wireless Tools are an Open Source project sponsored by Hewlett Packard (through my contribution) since 1996, and build with the contribution of many Linux users all over the world.

The Wireless Extension (WE) is a generic API allowing a driver to expose to the user space configuration and statistics specific to common Wireless LANs. The beauty of it is that a single set of tool can support all the variations of Wireless LANs, regardless of their type (as long as the driver support Wireless Extension). Another advantage is these parameters may be changed on the fly without restarting the driver (or Linux).

The Wireless Tools (WT) is a set of tools allowing to manipulate the Wireless Extensions. They use a textual interface and are rather crude, but aim to support the full Wireless Extension. There are many other tools you can use with Wireless Extensions, however Wireless Tools is the reference implementation.

• iwconfig manipulate the basic wireless parameters
• iwlist allow to initiate scanning and list frequencies, bit-rates, encryption keys...
• iwspy allow to get per node link quality
• iwpriv allow to manipulate the Wireless Extensions specific to a driver (private)
• ifrename allow to name interfaces based on various static criteria

Most Linux distributions also have integrated Wireless Extensions support in their networking initialisation scripts, for easier boot-time configuration of wireless interfaces. They also include Wireless Tools as part of their standard packages.

Wireless configuration can also be done using the Hotplug scripts and distribution specific support, this enable the proper support of any removable wireless interface (Pcmcia, CardBus, USB...).

Any versions of the Pcmcia package offer the possibility to do wireless configuration of Pcmcia and Cardbus card through thefile wireless.opts. This allow to fully integrate wireless settings in the Pcmcia scheme mechansism. However, this method is now deprecated in favor of distribution specific methods.

Please note that the Wireless Tools (starting with version 19) supports fully IEEE 802.11 parameters and devices, support older style of devices and most proprietary protocols, and are prepared to handle HiperLan as well. More recent versions of course adds more 802.11 support.
But, unfortunately not all drivers support all these features...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Info at post #14 is oriented to Developers/....

[ShadowAce]

Internet over PCMCIA laptop...

I've got it working on my laptop--and it wasn't much trouble at all. However, I do not use LiveCDs, and it did require installing ndiswrapper, along with the Windows drivers for the wireless card.

From what I understand the Broadcom chipset (which is what I also use, BTW) should be natively supported RSN. I believe that they were going to put that into the kernel either for 2.6.17 or very shortly thereafter.

I know that doesn't really help you at the moment. I've never tried to get wireless working from a Live CD distro, though I should probably look into it further.

[martin_fierro]

Thanx for your tips! Was waiting to receive "Linux Bible" from the library before

1. attempting to set up a dual-boot on an old desktop PC; then, once I got familar enough with Linux,
2. installing Linux as the exclusive OS on an old Win 98 Laptop with wireless card (now that MS Win 98 support has gone the way of the Dodo).

Yeah, I imagine that a major part of my problem is trying to connect wirelessly from a live CD. VectorLinux's Live CD wasn't finding either the Linksys or Broadcomm cards on the laptops.

So I'm sure I'll be back to this topic once I've actually installed Linux on the laptop.

Thanks again!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

SLAX has a new release out ....and in checking the forums....

SLAX

found this comment:

**************************

Hi Gemini,
Firstly I can confirm that ndiswrapper under slax does work!. I am no Linux or Slax expert myself, but with a bit of research (google is your friend) and providing there is support for your wifi card, you should be able to get it working.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/installation

This should be the first place to start your research, scroll down to the heading "Install windows driver", read it and then click on the "list" link. If your card is supported just follow the advice for obtaining the windows drivers.

Now copy the driver files to somewhere on your Slax machine and in Konsole "cd" to the folder where the windows drivers are stored.

Now you need to enter the commands to get everything working, just refer to the ndiswrapper site for the info you need.

Just to give you an idea of what you need to enter in "konsole", the commands I use are listed below:

ndiswrapper -i PRISMA02.inf #this is the windows driver for my card
modprobe ndiswrapper
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys #this is the name of my router
iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
iwconfig wlan0 key restricted ********** # here is the WEP encription key
iwconfig wlan0 channel 6
ifconfig wlan0 up
dhcpcd -G 192.168.1.1 wlan0
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.111 netmask 255.255.255.0
route add default gw 192.168.1.1

If you still have no success after this, I will try and help you further.

***********************************

hope some thing in the dialog helps....SLAX is a Slackware based Live CD that can also be installed to disk,...uses a little weight windowmanager than KDE.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Little should be light....geez/

[bigdcaldavis]

I mainly use Xandros Linux. It comes with ndiswrapper pre-installed. All I have to do it go into the Control Center (KControl), go to Network Settings, enter Administrator Mode, enter my root password, go to Wireless Options, and then click on NDIS Drivers, and install my drivers. My wifi works immediately after doing that.

If you want a truly free Xandros OS, get Xandros 3.0.2 Open Circulation Edition. Xandros 4 Home Edition and Xandros 4 Home Edition Premium now require a product activation code to get Xandros Networks to work (Xandros Networks is to Xandros as CNR is to Linspire, but merely using Xandros Networks doesn't cost a dime, whereas you have to pay a minimum of $20/year to use CNR). I asked somebody on the Xandros forums if a Xandros 4 OCE would require a fee to use Xandros Networks, and they said "probably".

So if you want a truly free Xandros, pass on Xandros 4 OCE and go with Xandros 3.0.2 OCE.