3.1. Why Debian and why just
this card?
I have been trying for months to get wireless working on
Debian and after reading far and wide and getting help from
irc.debian.org, I realized that there really is no Cookbook
in getting wireless set up. Thus having just done it I want
to commit to 'paper' so that you all can use it and I can
refer to it knowing it is safe somewhere. :)
3.1.1. Redhat installation
I have gotten a few requests for help on getting the card
installed on other distributions. I will try to address the
RedHat Installation in this mini-how-to
3.1.2. Suse Installation
My girlfriend got the WPC-11 card working on Suse. I am
waiting for her to give me her how to
3.2. Required Hardware
By required I mean, here is what I used to get this to work,
and may serve as guide to anyone who wants to know what
really works.
BEFW11S4- EtherFast? Wireless AP + Cable/DSL Router
w/4-Port Switch. I really really like this WAP (Wireless
Access Point). It is OS independent (read, linux friendly)
and is configured using a browser so no need to touch
Microsoft software at all, even to configure it. And if you
don't know what a switch is, let me tell ya, they rock.
Essentially they allow the NIC to communicate in both
directions at the same time. I highly recommend one.
Link-sys WPC11. I have a version 3.0 and don't recommend any
thing less than a version 2.5 Cost about 80 dollars
3.2.1. What is the linksys
card based on?
It is an Inersil Prism 3-based card
3.4. Notes on additional
helpful software
You will also need some way to setup you IP address on your
wireless card, I recommend either
apt-get install DHCP-client
|
to install the DHCP-client that will automatically
configure your IP address, if you have a DHCP server. The
WAP-11 hardware does provide DHCP server capabilities
Or at least have the pump application, which also
will query a DHCP server and get you an IP address from the
DHCP server. Note I tend to use pump when I am
trying out new hardware to see if there is a connection,
since to test a particular device, say eth0 I would
type
where the option
-i tells
pump what
device to try to get an IP address. In this particular case,
when I could not get Debian to automatically set up my wireless
card, which was device
wlan0, I would type
and
pump would try to set up the device.
Anyway, the point is, that it is a good trouble shooting
command, and you should know about it, and I talk more about it
later.
I also recommend you use the "kernel-package" package when
you want to build your new kernel, which I will get to. This
tool is very good and you should be using it anyway when you
are building new kernel for the Debian distribution. You can
install it by typing
apt-get install kernel-package
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Also, be sure to read the documentation it comes with,
in case I don't do a good job explaining how to use it, later
in this document
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