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| Thread ID: 114617 | 2010-12-10 06:55:00 | Ubuntu - USB Wireless-G Dongle | Myth (110) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1160429 | 2010-12-10 06:55:00 | Am going to be "installing" a USB wireless dongle on my media server which is running XBMC on top of a desktop-less Ubuntu (Lynx 10.04 from memory). The dongle uses this driver (linuxwireless.org)... 1, Does anyone know of a really good guide for wireless config via the commandline? Most are ok, but seem to miss certain info 2, is there anything I need to do to ensure the wireless is always 'up' on bootup? 3, will I have to build the drivers into the kernel, or are these already in the kernel. If so, any good guides to build an Ubuntu kernel (I am used to the gentoo way which seems to be a lot easier for me) |
Myth (110) | ||
| 1160430 | 2010-12-10 07:19:00 | Just wondering - do you not have a GUI installed? If wireless is going to work "out of the box" so to speak, getting it going from the GUI is usually almost trivial. -- or use the MS Windows driver with ndiswrapper (usually works well). |
johnd (85) | ||
| 1160431 | 2010-12-10 07:22:00 | Was probably reading your post wrong - "desktop-less" = no GUI not what I thought (top-less or no monitor)? | johnd (85) | ||
| 1160432 | 2010-12-10 07:28:00 | desktop-less == no Gnome/KDE/etc Commandline only ndiswrapper requires GUI setup, no? (I'm only going from memory having played with it once before many moons ago) |
Myth (110) | ||
| 1160433 | 2010-12-10 07:32:00 | I believe ndiswrapper has a GUI front end that you do not have to use. | johnd (85) | ||
| 1160434 | 2010-12-10 23:38:00 | Am going to be "installing" a USB wireless dongle on my media server which is running XBMC on top of a desktop-less Ubuntu (Lynx 10.04 from memory). The dongle uses this driver (linuxwireless.org)... 1, Does anyone know of a really good guide for wireless config via the commandline? Most are ok, but seem to miss certain info 2, is there anything I need to do to ensure the wireless is always 'up' on bootup? 3, will I have to build the drivers into the kernel, or are these already in the kernel. If so, any good guides to build an Ubuntu kernel (I am used to the gentoo way which seems to be a lot easier for me) Unfortunately not - I rarely use howto guides - but unless your network is totally insecure, the utility you'll be configuring is wpa_supplicant. Yes - you'll need to add it to Ubuntu's network init (/etc/network/interfaces). Most standard wifi parameters can be configured here, but if you want to do something a bit strange you may find calling up / down scripts from here to be nicer. Ubuntu builds the drivers for almost everything as a module, so they should already be there, but won't load unless you need them. If you'd like to build a custom kernel this is certainly possible, although you're unlikely to need this - it's done in largely the same way as gentoo. Just download the source package you want (vanilla, Ubuntu patched [available via apt], zen etc), unpack, build and install. A few other things to note: Don't use ndiswrapper. It's obsolete, temperamental, and doesn't work properly with the new wifi stack (mac80211). As mac80211 has drivers for almost everything anyway, you shouldn't need it. If you need to choose a driver while configuring wpa_supplicant, this will almost always be 'wext'. Your dongle will probably require firmware. This may be already present in your system (in which case you wont' need to do anything), or available via apt - if it is, obtaining it via these channels is usually better. If not, then you'll need to download it and put it in the hotplug firmware directory. The firmware will be loaded when the device is initialised. |
Erayd (23) | ||
| 1160435 | 2010-12-11 01:42:00 | Looks like this page (wiki.debian.org) may be what I am after in regards where to obtain firmware etc I am not really wanting to rebuild the kernel, only if it is an absolute necessity |
Myth (110) | ||
| 1160436 | 2010-12-11 01:44:00 | Looks like this page (wiki.debian.org) may be what I am after in regards where to obtain firmware etc I am not really wanting to rebuild the kernel, only if it is an absolute necessityJudging by that page, you probably won't need to - the Ubuntu kernel should be recent enough to include support. |
Erayd (23) | ||
| 1160437 | 2010-12-13 02:27:00 | I so knew this would turn into a PITA... right, Got the dongle today so went to install No, it won't run straight from the box. It is a WUSB54GC ver3 (yes the headache one) Anyway, blacklisted rt2800usb (as per instructions I found online) That finally got it up, though I am having some difficulties... When I reboot, I have nothing, doesn't ping or anything. The only way to get it up I have noticed is to run the following: sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart Then we have ping back and can quite happily ping each computer or google This is the contents of /etc/network/interfaces: iface wlan0 inet static address 192.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.xxx.xxx.0 broadcast 192.xxx.xxx.255 gateway 192.xxx.xxx.xxx wireless-essid networkname wireless-key abcd->z wireless-channel 11 wireless-mode managed dns-nameservers xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx dns-search networkname Which leads me to another problem, as soon as I initialise WEP on the router (one laptop will only take WEP), I lose connection again. I manually add the WEP key via cli using iwconfig, and it still wont work. Both WEP keys are exactly the same |
Myth (110) | ||
| 1160438 | 2010-12-13 03:08:00 | ^ And this ladies and gentleman, is why the world prefers Windows!.......LOL | SolMiester (139) | ||
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