Connecting to a wireless network

**studbucket** · 10-13-2005

Hi, I just recently installed Red Hat on an old computer of mine and I am trying to connect to the network I have going at my place. I am using a USB Adapter I got from Microsoft several years ago (I believe it is the MN-510). Now, I am having a little bit of trouble trying to connect to the network, probably because I don't exactly know how to go about it, I think I have found some of the right tools, but I haven't used them correctly.

Anyway, is there a utility someone suggest I get, or an approach I take with this? Thanks so much.

**smolloy** · 10-13-2005

Does RedHat recognise the USB adapter when you plug it in?/ I.e. are there any receive/send lights that come on??

What happens if you type "ifconfig" (as root) at the command line?? Post the output here.

Also, is it the latest version of RedHat you have?? Installing the latest version of a distro will make life a lot easier for you, in terms of getting things like this working.

**studbucket** · 10-14-2005

Originally Posted by smolloy

Does RedHat recognise the USB adapter when you plug it in?/ I.e. are there any receive/send lights that come on??

Yes it does. It is also recognized in the hardware browser.

Originally Posted by smolloy

What happens if you type "ifconfig" (as root) at the command line?? Post the output here.

lo Link encap: Local Loopback
inet addr: 127.0.0.1 Mask: 255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: :: 1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric: 1
RX packets: 2708 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets: 2708 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
Collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes: 2281482 (2.1 MiB)
TX bytes: 2281482 (2.1 MiB)

Originally Posted by smolloy

Also, is it the latest version of RedHat you have?? Installing the latest version of a distro will make life a lot easier for you, in terms of getting things like this working.

Yes I think it is, Enterprise version 4?

**smolloy** · 10-14-2005

So it has recognised it, but has yet to connect. That's a good start! Have you tried configuring it through the hardware browser??

What's the output of "iwconfig" (again run as root)??

**bidi** · 10-14-2005

You need to configure it. Type "iwconfig", that's the wireless configuration interface. Read the man page for iwconfig ("man iwconfig") to learn how to get it setup. There's a lot of options that can be passed to iwconfig, but you only NEED 3: "iwconfig <interface> channel <channel #> essid <SSID> mode ad-hoc". For the mode, you'll want it to be ad-hoc. Check just "iwconfig" with no parameters to see what the interface is. The channel will be set by your router and so will the SSID.

**studbucket** · 10-15-2005

The output was:

lo no wireless extensions

sit0 no wireless extensions

So, I haven't really had too much time to open up the man page, but, the SSID is just my network name right? I can find the channel (I think it is 6), and what of the above output is the interface?

Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it.

**smolloy** · 10-15-2005

Sorry to say this, but the output of iwconfig kinda suggests that your network device isn't installed propoerly. If it was it would have appeared in iwconfig.

**studbucket** · 10-15-2005

Hmmm, ok. How would I go about installing this properly? And if it is installed properly, why is it recognized? I have the CD that came with it, but I don't know how to install the drivers or make that CD useful at all (in this situation that is).

**studbucket** · 10-15-2005

Bumping to see if anyone knows

**bidi** · 10-16-2005

Go on google and find out what chipset it has. That will point you in the right direction. From there you can find a Linux compatible driver and get going.

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