[clue-tech] wireless on Ubuntu

[Dennis J Perkins]

I didn't come across any references to wicd but I was using Ubuntu, not
Xubuntu.  I'll need to look into that.

On Sat, 2007-06-09 at 21:59 -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> Back to the topic at hand.
> 
> I spent a few hours this afternoon and evening working on my wireless
> (Atheros chip).
> 
> 1. Found a report on Ubuntu forums that wicd (used to be Connection
> Manager) would do the trick, so I removed Network Manager and
> installed wicd. No results.
> 
> 2. Lots more googling and foruming, but nothing turned up, so I did a
> little sleuthing and dmesging. No sign of a wireless card anywhere.
> 
> 3. Finally the light bulb went on. The Ubuntu kernel upgrades don't
> always upgrade everything related (piss poor design, IMO). I was
> bitten by that a few months ago with the nvidia modules on my desktop
> system. So, I installed linux-restricted-modules-generic again, and lo
> and behold it installed the correct version.
> 
> 4. Reboot, and at least I got dmesg output for the Atheros card. I
> also got a popup with the standard Debian bullshit: you've loaded a
> module that we don't like the looks of. Yes, I know it's proprietary,
> so shut up and go away. Still no results from wicd. wicd presumes that
> the wireless is device wlan0, but the dmesg output indicated wifi0, so
> I updated the preferences and tried again. No cigar. Enter iwconfig.
> Aha, iwconfig thinks it's device ath0! Updated the preferences, and
> success.
> 
> 5. Now I need to figure out how to put the wicd gui monitor in the
> xubuntu panel. The wise ones in Ubuntu land have screwed with xfce
> sufficiently, that nothing makes sense. I can get it there manually,
> ie '/opt/wicd/edgy-panel.py &', so all is not lost. The xubuntu 'add
> new item' to panel function is brain dead - only certain
> pre-determined functions can be added.
> 
> 6. Now I need to take the laptop somewhere that has WEP to see if that
> wil work. My (part time) wirelss at home is totally unsecured.
> 
> Enjoy,