Wireless and Slackware?

Has anyone successfully installed a wireless adapter under Slackware with the original ) kernel? I'm asking because I can't seem to make it work. I know the driver is good, and that the adapter works just fine because I just rebooted under Debian now (dual boot computer) and as you can see it works just fine. Under Debian I just configured "/etc/network/interfaces", which doesn't exist in Slackware and did "ifup <my interface>" and it just resolved itself. I was able to find a config file, "/etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf" which I configured, but I still can't get it. I also tried manually configuring the interface with "iwconfig blah blah blah" and then did "ifconfig <interface> up" which brought it up. I'm pretty much stuck from here on. My router is set up for DHCP but I'm not 100% sure how to get that going under Slackware. Like I said, in Debian "ifup" pretty much takes care of everything for ya.

"dhcpd" runs the daemon.

Hello
I am happy to report that the recently released Slackware v10.2 has updated wireless support substantially improving and updating wireless support. Naturally you have to know what module you need for your particular wireless adaptor (unless you have one of those USB wireless adaptors that are basically driverless) and in my case having an Atheros based D-Link DWL-G520 I am well supported by madwifi module.
The really sweet change can be found in "/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1". It's update is so complete that it basically makes "/etc/rc.d/rc.wireless" redundant and unneeded by most folks. Now, in the 10.2 version, rc.inet1 has a complete wireless section for various interfaces/nics and even a generic one to cover those not specifically listed or perhaps even manufactured yet since it is so complete. Here you specify your wireless interface (in my case ath0) by uncommenting the appropriate and well defined line and proceed with dhcp or static addresses and rc.inet1 handles iwconfig, ifconfig and enables it and bang! you're up. Just be sure to put your gateway addy in which is common to all samples and therefore not repeated in each and enter your router's gateway addy as "nameserver" in "/etc/resolv.conf". Works great!
Jimmy

Sounds good... I was holding back on the 10.2 install until I got my 10.1 working the way I wanted, but I guess I'll need to get that installed before expected. In cause you're wondering why I'd want to setup 10.1 and then uninstall it, it's because I think the best way to learn is to practice. Do it enough times and you'll be able to expect anything.

It was fairly simple to set up a wireless PCMCIA card in my Slackware 10.1 laptop. it was a fairly old card though. even downloaded a few applets that displayed signal strengths, and one which was a pluggin to gkrellm (which didn't seem to work)

I will soon be trying out a WiFi PCI Card in my desktop Slackware 10.2 PC, but I have no internet. I'm going to attempt to sniff out wireless networks in my appartment complex to see if I can get internet access until I can afford it.

yeah, I know its a jackass thing to do, but I wont be stealing a whole lot of bandwidth. and it serves them right for not correctly administering their own network :-p

I have a D-Link dwl-g630 Atheros based card in my IBM laptop, madwifi+stock kernel from Slackware 10.1.and 10.2 works really well for me.

My biggest problem is that the Amtel chipset isn't supported by Linux. It's always a pain to get it working. Took me 2 months of tweaking to get it working under Debian, and in that time I had tried it with 3 other distros with no luck. It's a pain to get it to work, cause I need a connection to get the driver, but I can't get a connection without the driver. So I have to move the computer to the room where the router is so I can get it working there.

you can't download the driver and put it on a cd or floppy or usb drive?

Too much work! :D :oops:

This computer that I'm on is just a "test" computer anyway. Right now, I have it working with internet on the Debian install, but now Slackware. The Debian install actually does require you to have a working connection, unless you want to guess which CDs have what you want. Since I tried Debian before any of the other distros, I moved it there and left it there for a while. Now I moved it back over here, and don't plan on moving it again.