M$ Wireless

[Irrylath]

Yesterday I resized my Win2k partition and installed Mandrake 9.1 on half of my hard drive. The problem I didn't foresee is the lack of support for my Microsoft Wireless USB Ethernet Adapter (model MN-510 [don't ask what posessed me to pay for a MS product, it was the cheapest wireless hardware at office depot at the time]). Normally I would just connect to the lan through a cat5, but this desktop is too far from the base station for that, so is there any possible way to get this to run under linux?

By the way, Mandrake identified it as a scanner for some reason. Go figure.

The specs on it are:
IEEE 802.11b, Wi-Fi compliant
USB 1.1
USB Adapter: Full speed USB compatible High-Powered Port
Modulation: CCK, DBPSK, DQPSK
1-11 channels
64 or 128 bit WEP
Transmit power: above +15dBm, less than +17 dBm

[kshim5]

If i were you i would take back the card and trade it in for one that has support for both OS's fin driver here

http://team.vantronix.net/ar5k/

[ven0m]

I found this on G4L
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/3/2003/06/4/67335
I also found the driver
ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/

[Irrylath]

Thanks a lot Venom, once I figure out where I put my kernel source I'll be up and running, leaving one less victim to Microsoft's gnashing jaws :D

[ven0m]

I don't use mandrake but I found this
The source code for Mandrake 9.1 is on disk 3 of the Download Edition but is not installed by default. You can load it through Mandrake Control Centre, do a search for "kernel-source".
then, make sure it's installed into /usr/src/linux. If it install's it like this /usr/src/linux.2.4.20 (this is an example), then make a symbolic link to it, as root:
ln -s /usr/src/linux.2.4.20 /usr/src/linux

Hope this helps

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Irrylath
Thanks a lot Venom, once I figure out where I put my kernel source I'll be up and running, leaving one less victim to Microsoft's gnashing jaws :D

Search the JL forums for 'mandrake kernel-source' and you should find plenty of previous threads to help.

[Irrylath]

I burned disc 3 and installed the kernel source, ran wlan, and the installation ran smoothly, although I'm still not connected to the LAN. From here, I'm not sure what to do. I've read at least 6 different howto's on this subject, each having a different method to it. Editing modules.conf didn't go too well, neither did some other stuff from the command line. Keep in mind i'm still a helpless newb at heart (:p ).

Another way of editing modules.conf might work, but there are a couple of values I'm not sure about:
network: (where would i find this?)
broadcast: (same as above)
netmask: (i'm guessing this one is subnet mask)
IP: (which one? WAN? LAN?)

[Irrylath]

Maybe I should've asked that in Networking?

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Irrylath
Maybe I should've asked that in Networking?

Your wish is my command. :)

[ven0m]

Irrylath, can you give us some more info on the network your trying to connect too. e.g. are you using dhcp or is your network static? if it's static you'll need to know the ip address for the network (e.g. ip address 192.168.0.0, subnet 255.255.255.0, these are usally the defaults).
As for the location for your networking file (this is in redhat, so this might be different in drake):
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

if it's not use locate to find ifcfg-eth0
if you don't know what locate is use it's man page, man locate

[Irrylath]

I was having other hardware issues with mdk that were causing problems during bootup, so I pretty much screwed my mandrake partition and went to Redhat 9. I went through the wlan setup again, this time without a problem. It seems to be doing okay this time, yet i still can't get connected.


ifup wlan0

reports that the IP couldn't be resolved (or something to that effect, maybe I should've written it down :rolleyes: )

The wireless network is DHCP. As for ifcfg-eth0, i'm pretty sure wlan0 uses it's own file located at /etc/wlan/ifcfg-default (unles you've reconfigured it), and I've already edited that one. I did notice something in the readme I hadn't seen before though.

Don't forget to set up your resolv.conf to point at your DNS server

I looked at resolv.conf, and it's a blank file. Before I edit anything that may be crucial, what should I do to point it at the DNS?

[Irrylath]

I'm not quite sure how I did it since I ran a series of commands in the console, but I'm connected to my lan and the internet in linux. Thanks to all who posted here.