[clue-tech] going wireless

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Mon, 2008-11-24 at 22:31 -0500, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> Looking around briefly,  I see two different devices:  One plugs into a USB 
> port,  the other is a PCMCIA card.  Aside from that (and I'll post details if 
> you like),  are there specific things I need to be looking for to get some 
> functionality?

I hear there are a variety of tools depending on the chipset in use.  I
personally use the ipw2200 driver in the stock Feodra kernel
distribution.  I also use wpa_supplicant with hot spots and at work,
though not at home.  Fortunately my wireless at home (via a Linksys
running DD-WRT) hooks up with my laptop with no special configuration
other than normal desktop tools.

Also, learn to use the iw* tools: iwconfig, iwlist, etc.  iwconfig is to
wireless what ifconfig is to wired connections.

> Things like being able to take advantage of public hotspots,  etc. might be 
> nice...

I've had problems getting Fedora to find hotspots using their networking
tools (possibly my own misunderstanding of how those tools should work).
I've ended up scanning local spots (sudo iwlist scan <port>) and then
writing scripts to access them.  One particularly troublesome one was
the Colorado Springs Public Library.  I finally got it working, using
the following script and wpa_supplication.conf.  Note that finding the
gateway was a guess based on the IP address I was given via DHCP.  To be
honest, I'm not sure the wpa_supplicant file is even being used with
this script (I don't think it is), but I add it in because I found an
entry for the library in it.  Might have been left over from my
experiments trying to connect.

#!/bin/bash
# Bring up the Wireless at Colorado Springs Public Library
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------
set -x
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 down
/sbin/ifconfig eth1 down

# For integrated wireless
dev="eth1"

if [ "$1" = "" ]
then
    /sbin/service network stop

    # Reload the driver because sometimes it just gets confused.
    /sbin/rmmod ipw2200
    /sbin/modprobe ipw2200
    /sbin/iwconfig eth1 essid any mode Auto ap any
    /sbin/service network start
    /sbin/dhclient -1 $dev
    /sbin/route add default eth1
    /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.10.1
else
    # Bring the port down
    killall dhclient
    /sbin/ifconfig eth1 down
    cp /etc/resolv.conf.home /etc/resolv.conf

    # Reload the driver because sometimes it just gets confused.
    /sbin/rmmod ipw2200
    /sbin/modprobe ipw2200
fi

network={
   ssid="PPLD_W"
   key_mgmt=NONE
}
-- 
Michael J. Hammel                                    Principal Software Engineer
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org                           http://graphics-muse.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  The time it will take before the breadth of human knowledge is available on
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