Wireless Idiocy

[guardianfox]

Well I'll admit it, apart from a very basic understanding, Linux and I don't know much about each other. I ask it to work nicely with a piece of hardware, it thinks I'm asking it to make dinner. It says something about GRUB, and I think that maybe it actually HAS made dinner.

ANYWAY...

Running SUSE 10.2, fresh install, GNOME.
Compiled and installed an RT73 driver successfully for a belkin wireless dongle.
Successfully connecting to the internet using iwconfig, ifconfig, and dhclient commands.

PROBLEM:

I can't seem to get Network Manager to cooperate with me and have it successfully connect to the device. I've varied most of the settings in YAST. Most of them only seem to make things worse. For the device, it's looking for wlan-bus-usb, though I've tried specifying a number instead of "bus-usb" but the device's number changes nearly every time I boot, wlan0,wlan1,wlan2, etc... and of course that didn't work either.

Usually I can get it to a point where it just keeps rejecting my network key, but I honestly don't know how I got that far and I truly can't figure out why it's rejecting a simple and correct key when I have all the other settings matched.

QUESTIONS:

How can I just script the iwconfig thing? Can that be done if wlan(1,2,3...) keeps changing? What stupid newbie mistake could I be making with Network Manager?

Thanks,
-G

[budman7]

Use "iwconfig" with no parameters, that will tell you if it is wlan0 or whatever.
Then do
iwconfig interface essid
iwconfig interface key You might need "open" here
dhclient or dhcpcd interface

But tbh, I have not had much luck with Suse and wireless, I hope it works for you.

[guardianfox]

Use "iwconfig" with no parameters, that will tell you if it is wlan0 or whatever.
Then do
iwconfig interface essid
iwconfig interface key You might need "open" here
dhclient or dhcpcd interface

But tbh, I have not had much luck with Suse and wireless, I hope it works for you.

Yup, got that far... Works no problems... Would really rather script it or have it managed for me... This is really driving me nuts. :/

Additionally: It seems that SUSE thinks the dongle is a new device every time it is attached. Which is why it gives it a new name. I tried turning off "FORCE_PERSISTENT_NAMES" in the sysconfig editor. That seemed to give me wlan0, but then I kept getting errors "network is down" and stuff like that.

[budman7]

Do you always get "wlan?"
If so,you could try with "wlan?
The ? is a wildcard for a single character.
You can use &&, that will string 2 commands together.

iwconfig wlan? && iwconfig wlan? essid && wlan ............

I do that with my Ubuntu box, stringing 4 commands together.

Not sure how you can get that script to run at boot as it has been awhile since I've used Suse.

[guardianfox]

Do you always get "wlan?"
If so,you could try with "wlan?
The ? is a wildcard for a single character.
You can use &&, that will string 2 commands together.

iwconfig wlan? && iwconfig wlan? essid && wlan ............

I do that with my Ubuntu box, stringing 4 commands together.

Not sure how you can get that script to run at boot as it has been awhile since I've used Suse.

That's handy information. Actually, I did eventually get it to stick with wlan0, by turning off persistent names FIRST and THEN installing the driver. Which is cool. I'm not up on this scripting thing, but with that && thing and wlan0 staying put... I think I can finish this .

IF I figure out how to script the whole thing, I'll add a simple step-by-step in this thread so I might save someone else a headache.

Thanks.