DebianDog wireless LAN HowTo

How to do things, solutions, recipes, tutorials
Post Reply
Message
Author
mcewanw
Posts: 3169
Joined: Thu 16 Aug 2007, 10:48
Contact:

DebianDog wireless LAN HowTo

#1 Post by mcewanw »

Since there appears to not be much information on getting wireless connection working in DebianDog, I am starting this new thread rather than cluttering up the existing DebianDog HowTo thread. That will, I feel, allow more detailed discussion on the subject and for others, far more expert than I, to provide better information and further example configurations for different machines and wireless cards. I should add that I knew nothing about configuring wireless prior to undertaking the following, but it worked so the details might be useful to someone.

Much of the info I use came from here:

https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi

and the firmware referred to in this post comes from the Debian non-free repositories.

Example 1. Using Fujitsu Amilo PentiumM 1.6GHz 1 GByte RAM laptop.

Booted DebianDog_jwm.

Using porteus boot method and since I have debian_dog live stored in debiandog_jwm subdirector of my hard drive's third partition used menu.lst entry:

Code: Select all

title debiandog_jwm (sda3/debiandog_jwm)
  root (hd0,2)
  kernel /debiandog_jwm/live/vmlinuz1 noauto from=/debiandog_jwm/  changes=EXIT:/debiandog_jwm/live/
  initrd /debiandog_jwm/live/initrd1.xz
Note that for my machines and examples below I did NOT need any menu.lst nonetworking kernel line entry alluded to by emil in DebianDog main howto thread re his wireless configuration. However, perhaps that is needed sometimes (I don't know).

Note also that the following rather assumes you have a wired internet connection on the machine you are configuring such that you can apt-get install the required firmware. Otherwise, as I actually did, you could download the required debian wireless firmware package on another machine using 'apt-get install -d' (the -d means download only without installing) and onto a usb stick for transferring over and installing via right-click install deb package in XFE file manager. A copy of downloaded (or installed) debian packages can generally be found archived in /var/cache/apt/archives once system saved and rebooted.


Commands entered and results used to help get wireless connection working:

1.

Code: Select all

iwconfig
initial result was:

Code: Select all

lo   no wireless extensions
eth0 no wireless extensions
Had a wireless module automatically loaded should have seen another eth interface (e.g. eth1 or eth2 with wireless 802.11 information). Had that been there would probably have been able to jump to configuring wireless with frisbee step. It wasn't, so needed to find the wireless card used and install the appropriate modules first as follows:

2. To find info about wireless card on system enter:

Code: Select all

lspci


(or for more details use lspci -vv or lspci -knn)

For my Amilo laptop this lspci command showed the following as part of its long listing:

Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico] Network Connection (rev 05)

3. Can now google for the shown network controller using search criteria "Debian Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG". That google search led me to the relevant firmware page link:

https://wiki.debian.org/ipw2200

4. Per the instructions on that wiki page, I installed the relevant firmware module for this wireless card using the commands:

Code: Select all

apt-get update && apt-get install firmware-ipw2x00
Note that it is probably best to reboot your system here and make sure the changes are saved before proceeding with the following, though I actually managed to get it working without doing that.

5. I then loaded the module for the first time using commandline:

Code: Select all

modprobe -r ipw2200 ; modprobe ipw2200
and checked with command lsmod to see that it was actually loaded.

6. Re-running command iwconfig now revealed:

Code: Select all

lo no wireless extensions
eth0 no wireless extensions
eth2 IEEE 802.11bg ESSIS "..." etc...
7. Once you get a wireless eth interface showing like this via iwconfig command, you are basically home and dry and just need to configure wifi connection via DD provided Frisbee program (e.g. right click network icon on task bar and choose "Set up networking" to start frisbee).

Basically, I just then refreshed the Wireless Network tabbed page in Frisbee, highlighted my home wireless LAN that showed up there and pressed "Connect", which asked for my home wireless LAN password to be entered.

If you have any problems at that stage, you may need to then press Frisbee's "Diagnostics" button and "Edit Configuration" button to check psk password you assigned is correctly shown. But really, as long as iwconfig is showing an active eth interface assigned to wireless all should be fine from then on... (sometimes might need to restart DHCP in Frisbee, but generally I found none of that extra stuff is required unless you have stuffed up in between times). Note that you don't need to save wireless profile in Frisbee (as far as I could see) - wireless just connected automatically once I rebooted my system anyway (assuming Frisbee's Enable Wireless and Connect Wireless Automatically were checked).


Example 2. Using HP Elitebook 2730p, with DebianDog_jwm.

1. iwconfig again revealed no eth interface active for wireless connection (i.e. no wireless firmware module found installed).

2. In this case the command lspci revealed the machine to have an Intel PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN wireless card.

3. google for "debian Intel PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN" led me to the relevant firmware page link:


https://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi

4. Per the instructions on that wiki page, I installed the relevant firmware module for this wireless card using the commands:

Code: Select all

apt-get update && apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi
5. I then loaded the module for the first time using command:

Code: Select all

modprobe -r iwlwifi ; modprobe iwlwifi
6. command iwconfig now revealed an eth interface was assigned to the wireless card and frisbee was able to configure it successfully as per example 1 above.

William
github mcewanw

Post Reply