[WBEL-users] Correct way to configure a wireless ethernet interface?

Benjamin Smith lists at benjamindsmith.com
Thu Jun 23 13:00:53 CDT 2005


On my Fedora C3 laptop, I set up /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 as 
follows: 

DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Wireless
DHCP_HOSTNAME=mylaptop.mydomain.com
KEY=BIGLONGNASTYNUMBER
ESSID=MYESSID
MODE=managed
CHANNEL=5

With this, the standard `ifup eth1` works fine. When I travel, I tweak this 
file (symlinked to /etc/eth1 for my convenience) and restart eth1. 

Kwifi sucks. Nearest I can tell, Linux doesn't have a decent hotspot GUI 
anywhere to be found. I wrote my own sniffing script to help me out. It's 
written in PHP, it looks for open wifi hotspots. (useful when in a foreign 
city/town and you need to get on RIGHT NOW!) 

#! /usr/bin/php -q
<?

while (true)
        {
        $in=`iwlist eth1 scan`;
        $match="/Cell[\s\S]*?ago/";
        if (!preg_match_all($match, $in, $r))
                echo "NO NETWORKS FOUND.";
        $match2="/ESSID:\"(.*)\"[\s\S]*?n key:(.*)/";

        foreach($r[0] as $data)
                {
                if (preg_match($match2, $data, $s))
                        echo $s[1].' ('.$s[2].")\n";
                }
        sleep(5);
        echo "\n\n\n\n\n************\n";
        }
?>

Hope this helps, 

Ben 

On Thursday 23 June 2005 09:53, Nick wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> When I installed WBEL4 on my laptop, I ended up writing a simple
> script to modprobe the ipw2200 drivers and set the wireless options
> (SSID, encryption keys etc). I couldn't easily see with the tools I
> installed from the WBEL4 disc a particular tool that would accept the
> extra wireless parameters. I tried unsuccessfully to use KWifiManager
> to create a new configuration, but the settings never saved and there
> was no obvious way to have the settings magically restore.
> 
> On my WinXP machine laptop, it's extremely straightforward to
> configure wireless networking, so I'm wondering what I'm missing.
> 
> One other annoying-to-me effect I've noticed is that even when setting
> the laptop's regular GBit ethernet interface to not start at boot, it
> always does. As it's configured as eth0 (wireless is eth1) network
> connectivity on the wirelss interface fails until I bring eth0 down as
> they are both using the same gateway. I'm wondering therefore in how
> many different places network interfaces are controlled and why eth0
> starts up even though I've explicitly told it not to do so through the
> Network Device Control applet.
> 
> Thanks,
> Nick
> 
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> Whitebox-users at beau.org
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> 

-- 
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- XEROX PARC slogan, circa 1978


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