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All material presented are licensed under The GNU Free Documentation License.
This package is for installing wireless cards and it only exists for Desktop Systems; Laptop system have the wireless cards preconfigured and installed. If you had purchased a wireless card along with your Computer package, it would have been installed for you. If you purchase the wireless card elsewhere, the following will help you install the driver and get you going.
Additional configuration for your network(s) needs to be done in WPASupplicant.
The debian package for ndiswrapper are compiled along with the custom kernel. The package is preinstalled on the system. However, you will still need to download and add the driver for your particular wireless card.
The following is an extract from the ndiswrapper - wiki (see reference) customized and reproduced for you convenience.
ndiswrapper-modules, available in debian package. Check for precompiled kernel modules in Synaptic Package Manager.
ndiswrapper-utils, available in synaptic package manager.
ndiswrapper-commonscripts, available in synaptic package manager.
Wireless-toolsis a package containing tools used to manipulate Linux Wireless Extensions. It provides settings and stats. (Recommended but not essential.)
00:09.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 ...Then find out the PCI ID of the card that with 'lspci -n' corresponding to the first column of 'lspci' output. e.g.
[AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
00:09.0 0280: 14e4:4318 (rev 02)The PCI ID is third column or fourth in some distributions and of the form '14e4:4318'.
# ndiswrapper -i filename.infThis copies all necessary files to /etc/ndiswrapper and creates the config files for your card.
# ndiswrapper -lIf your installation was successful the following respond should appear:
Installed drivers: bcmwl5 driver installed, hardware presentWhere 'present' means that you have a card that can be used with the driver installed. In this case, broadcom driver bcmwl5 is used.
# depmod -aand then run
# modprobe ndiswrapperVerify result by checking the system log produced by dmesg. If the driver is loaded successfully, you should see a message in the system log
# ndiswrapper version <version> loaded
# iwconfigYou should see wlan with a interface available.
# ndiswrapper -e filenameTo uninstall ndiswrapper, go to synaptic package manager and uninstall ndiswrapper module and ndiswrapper util. You should find it in the Status section under the heading "installed (local or obsolete)".
# lsmodto check for existence of ndiswrapper module. Then, run
# ndiswrapper -lto see if the driver is installed correctly. If the driver is shown but the iwconfig shows no hardware interface, then the driver is incorrect.
Two common problems with ndiswrapper:
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4320) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)
Soln: Recompile the kernel without the in-kernel driver or don't use ndiswrapper and use the in-kernel driver.
See reference section for further documentations. If you are having problems with resumption from hibernation, check the suspend2 configuration.
Updated: 2007-09-06
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The material in this section is deprecated. It remains here for historical and archival purposes. Please use Network Manager instead. It is much more robust and easier to use.
WPA Supplicant is the application responsible for communicating with the local Wireless AP. More in wiki.
WPA_Supplicant provides key negotiation with the WPA Authenticator, and controls association with IEEE 802.11i networks. WPA and WPA2 are methods for securing wireless networks, the former using IEEE 802.1X, and the latter using IEEE 802.11i. WEP and Plain Text are also supported.
Network handshaking such as IP allocation are handled outside of wpa_supplicant. It is specified in the network interfaces file.
wpaguiis a gui for accessing wpa_supplicant.
wpasupplicantis a client for wireless networks.
ifplugdis a daemon for dynamically configuring your ethernet device when connected or disconnected from the network. (Recommended but not essential.)
Wireless-toolsis a package containing tools used to manipulate Linux Wireless Extensions. It provides settings and stats. (Recommended but not essential.)
guessnetis a package for network detection tool. Use mainly for mobile users when moving a machine among networks which don't necessarily provide DHCP. (Optional)
wirelessand add all the local users on this machine into the group.
visudoto give access to wpa applications. From a root shell issue the following command.
# visudoEnter the following under
User privilege specificationin sudoers:
%wireless ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant %wireless ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/wpa_cli %wireless ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/wpa_gui
/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conffile to root readable only. From a root shell issue the following command.
# chmod 600 /etc/network/interfaces # chmod 600 /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
Managed mode assumes the user is setting up for one wireless network. There are two ways wpa_supplicant can be specified in managed mode.
wpa-parameters are specified inside
/etc/network/interfacesfile. These elements needed to be manually specified under iface.
Element Example Value Description ======= ============= =========== wpa-ssid plaintextstring sets the ssid of your network wpa-bssid 00:1a:2b:3c:4d:5e the bssid of your AP wpa-psk 0123456789...... your preshared wpa key. Use wpa_passphrase(8) to generate your psk from a passphrase and ssid pair wpa-key-mgmt NONE, WPA-PSK, WPA-EAP, list of accepted authenticated key IEEE8021X management protocols wpa-group CCMP, TKIP, WEP104, list of accepted group ciphers for WPA WEP40 wpa-pairwise CCMP, TKIP, NONE list of accepted pairwise ciphers for WPA wpa-auth-alg OPEN, SHARED, LEAP list of allowed IEEE 802.11 authentication algorithms wpa-proto WPA, RSN list of accepted protocols wpa-identity myplaintextname administrator provided username (EAP authentication) wpa-password myplaintextpassword your password (EAP authentication) wpa-scan-ssid 0 or 1 toggles scanning of ssid with specific Probe Request frames wpa-ap-scan 0 or 1 or 2 adjusts the scanning logic of wpa_supplicantFor further details read README.modes, README.Debian and README.wpa_supplicant, etc in /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant. Here is an example interfaces file.
note: The drawback for using the interface file is not easily modifiable by normal user. The advantage is also it is not easily modifiable by normal user. e.g. home desktop user would like to change things conveniently, institutional administrator don't want users to mess up system setup and call for help.
For this setup all wireless parameters are specified in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
file.
The minimum is specified in /etc/network/interfaces
file.
The rest is contained in the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
file.
Here is an example interfaces file and
an example wpa_supplicant.conf file.
The netwok details can be setup using wpa_gui
.
If you are switching network, you may have to release the dhcp lease by issuing the following command in a root shell.
# ifdown wlan0
For further details read README.modes, README.Debian, etc in /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant.
Roaming mode is for mobile users who switches network frequently. e.g. From home to office to cafe to bar to home...
interfaces(in
/etc/network/) must have the following:
iface eth2 inet manual wpa-driver wext wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
where eth2 is replaced by whatever interface is in used and wext is whatever the network driver is used. Lines referencing guessnet is optional.
An example interfaces file and wpa_supplicant.conf file is provided for your perusal. Please uncomment and edit the file to suit your local requirements.
Test the wireless interface connection by issuing the following command.
# ifup eth2 # iwconfig
You should see the following:
The new wpa_supplicant configuration is brought up by ifup/down.
For further details read README.modes, README.Debian and README.wpa_supplicant, etc in /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant.
iwconfigfor the connection to the AP. From a root shell issue the following command.
# ifup wlan0 # iwconfig
where wlan0 is your wireless interface file.
Responses similar to the following should appear if you have not specified the network information.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:25 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
Use wpa_gui to configure the network if no static information or network information is specified in the interfaces
file.
# wpa_gui
After wpa_gui information is provided, issue the following commands and the next part should appear.
# ifdown wlan0 # ifup wlan0 # iwconfig
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:kitchenMode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:19:18:4A:3A:FF Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:25 dBm RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B Encryption key:23BC-BBEE-CCFE-086F-1758-E18E-15A1-020D-... Security mode:restricted Power Management:off Link Quality:25/100 Signal level:-80 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
ifconfigfor checking the connection to local dhcp server. An IP address should have been allocated from the local dhcp server. (skip this step if a manually set IP address is used.)
# ifconfig
Responses similar to the following should appear.
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:17:69:C2:3F
inet addr:192.168.1.133 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::215:17ee:fe6b:c2ef/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:38454 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:29103 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:40459188 (38.5 MiB) TX bytes:3456147 (3.2 MiB)
Interrupt:225 Memory:fbef8000-fbefa000
ping
the local gateway. e.g. 192.168.1.1
From a root shell issue the following command.
# ping 192.168.1.1
Responses similar to the following should appear.
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=5.46 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.12 ms ... --- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics --- 7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6020ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.111/4.433/13.475/4.132 ms
If another machine is available on the network, ping this machine from that as well to check communication is established both ways.
Specify the intefaces used in ifplugd
. From a root shell issue the following command.
# dpkg-reconfigure ifplugd
Specify appropriate interfaces to monitor.
e.g. For a desktop, specify auto
for static interfaces and nothing for hotplug interfaces, default parameters and stop
for suspend.
To add a finishing touch, create a desktop and an icon for your gnome users. Then, put them in their appropriate places - from a root shell issue the following command.
# cp wireless.desktop /usr/share/applications # cp wireless.png /usr/share/pixmaps
Updated: 2006-11-17
Back to topUpdated: 2006-01-03
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