Wireless and Slackware 10.2

[THEcheesedog]

I am completely new to linux and have installed Slackware 10.2 on my PC. I have been having problems getting it to be online with my wireless network. I found wireless drivers for linux and my wireless card. I rtfmed and did exactly what it said. It was able to see my network and connect. However, I was still unable to pull any web pages. What do I need to do? I was also curious if there was a way to compile the driver into my kernel and have it start at startup. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jeremy

[TheBigPhish]

if your wireless driver is a native linux driver, then you can add it in as a module and make it load, during your native start up stuff, or even configure it as a kernel chunk.

if your card requires ndiswrapper, then the best that you can do is make sure that the ndiswrapper is automatically loaded on startup, and that the driver is all squared away...can't compile ndiswrapper as a embedded kernel piece (yet)

[THEcheesedog]

Thank you for the response TheBigPhish. How exactly do I build it into the kernal as a module?

[TheBigPhish]

does your wireless card come natively supported by slackware?

or does it need ndiswrapper?

[THEcheesedog]

It doesn't come natively supported by it. However the manufacturer of the chip released a driver for it. http://www.ralinktech.com/supp-1.htm is the link for it.

[TheBigPhish]

wow, i book marked that one. That is nice that the company provided so many iterations of their drivers...hmm RT2500 (maybe this will....nevermind). Well, if it was able to connect to your network, and all that stuff...i would be looking at your network & firewall settings as to why the internet will not load pages in your browser...

with that kind of support from a manufacturer, as long as you have the right kernel / driver / chipset support...i believe it's as hard as having the right lines in your RC.WIRELESS file, which should load that every time at startup.

[THEcheesedog]

Thanks for all the help TheBigPhish. I'm going to do some more reading and see if I can't find a way to get the driver loaded as a module in the kernal. Planning on upgrading the kernal to 2.6.14

[netshogun]

If your system recognizes the wireless and you are able to ge an ip address, then do the following.

you must configure your wireless portion of your connection using

iwconfig

example

iwconfig eth0 essid myhomenet

iwconfig eth0 key mywepkey

then

use ifconfig to configure the actual ipaddress

so there is actually 2 parts to this, 1st use iwconfig to configure your wirelss card's wireless settings , then use ifconfig to configure the ipaddress.

k?

[THEcheesedog]

Thank you. I'll try this and see what happens, though I believe I already set all of that up.

[netshogun]

I have not had success configuring a wireless connection via GUI. Always via command line using iwconfig.

cheers