Wireless Install Tips: Linksys WPC54G, Dell Inspiron 2650

[DoubleA]

I'm not an expert with Puppy - less than 24 hrs experience with it. Much of that was spent trying to get wireless working on this laptop. Environment:
Dell Inspiron 2650 Laptop
LinkSys WPC54G card, running Encryption

I pieced together various messges from the forum threads and got it working as follows.
1) Get the WPC54G drivers accessible by Puppy
This laptop has Windows XP on its hard drive (NTFS). I tried mounting this with the Puppy Drive Mounter (pmount) and it was assigned /initrd/mnt/dev_save. So then I used ROX (menu -> file manager -> PuppyROX) and navigated to that folder. I was looking at the C:/ drive of the NTFS Windows partition. Amazing! A few clicks later and I navigated to the folder where I'd installed the LinkSys drivers in XP.

2) Mount the Linksys driver
To do this, I brought up a console window and changed directory (CD) to the folder where the drivers were found above. Once there, in the console window I typed:
ndiswrapper -i lsbcmnds.inf
This installed the bcmwls.sys driver from that folder.
To double-check:
ndiswrapper -l

Yup it was there. Now to mount it:
modprobe ndiswrapper

3) Now it was time to close the console window and click the Setup Icon. Selecting Connect to Internet by Network Interface brought up the Puppy_Network_Setup window. In the bottom right there was a new button labeled wlan0. Hurrah!

From there, I clicked the wlan0 button, did the wireless setup by pressing the autoconnect button and changing my ESSID and Key (10 hex digits I use for encryption). Mode is Auto. Name is autoconnect. Use this profile and you're in business. Now just do the Auto DHCP (I get that from my router). Click on Browser and enjoy the internet!

4) This worked great until I rebooted. I found, after a boot, I had to repeat the modprobe ndiswrapper and then reconfigure with the Network wizard.

The easiest way to solve this was with a hack. (Maybe someone wiser has a better solution.) Edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.network file and insert a line:

modprobe ndiswrapper

just before the "#Try to connect each ethernet interface found".
(I tried this in rc.local but by then dhcp had been run. Doing this one line in rc.network solved the reboot problem)

Hope this helps someone!

[Blaise]

This post gave me hope last night when I was trying to get my Broadcom PCMCIA WiFi card working on my laptop. following your instructions seemed to get everything working, the drivers appeared to install correctly and the wlan0 is now detected by puppyLinux.

However no matter what settings I try I can't connect to my network, I've used the wizard and have the option to scan for networks, (I've also tried auto as your howto suggests) the only thing I change is adding in my WEP key. When I try and use the profile it returns unsuccessful

Also Auto DHCP never seems to get a response.

Do you have any advice on how I can get connected to my network? I'm sure the card has been installed correctly as I can succsefully scan for networks.

Cheers,

Blaise.

[barriew]

Blaise,

Its always worth trying with WEP disabled. If this works, you know the problem is WEP

Not suggesting you run permanently like that, but WEP does appear to cause some problems.

Barrie

[Blaise]

Hi Barriew, thanks for the reply.

Can you please elaborate on the WEP problems?

I've been doing some reading over the last few days and have always read that when initailly connecting with WiFi it's always a good idea to disable WEP to make sure that the connection can be found.

I don't really want to do this as the Network is already up and running for a few machines amongst my own alternative machine and flat-mates laptops.

This aside, I am certain of the WEP key and see no reason why if I've input it correctly it causes problems.

Are there significant problems that having WEP can cause?

TIA

Blaise.

[barriew]

Blaise,

I'm no expert - I was just passing on something that had helped me and others to get wireless working
As there are no other networks near me, I haven't bothered to get it working. My router is set to only accept the MAC of the wireless adapter in my laptop and that is good enough security for me at the moment.
If you check some of the other threads regarding wireless problems you may find more information. Sorry not to be of further assistance - relative new user myself.

Barrie

[topaz]

Hi
Add to end of rc.local

modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig wlan0 essid mynet channel 6 key mykey
rm /etc/dhcpc/*.pid # remove any leftover process id files
dhcpcd -t 10 -d wlan0

put your settings in the bold parts

[Blaise]

Thanks topaz, That's brilliant, I've been searching for a network file of some sort in etc/ I didn't realise I could put it in rc.local.

[heind]

Thx for this post. It helped me a great deal to start from my beginnerslevel.

Only I did not know what file(s) the driver was and I copied only the .inf file to the linux PC. With ndiswrapper -i lsbmcd.inf" I got the message that the other files should be there as well, so I copied the other files.
Only now I got the message: lsbmcd.inf (or something like that) is already installed. But it is not functioning".
Can anyone help me how to install the driver from this situation.

[tempestuous]

You guys would be better off with the native Broadcom bcm43xx driver. Just make sure you install the missing firmware first -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=15573

This is a relatively new driver and has been reported as unreliable for some people, but I believe it's still a better option than the bulky mess that is ndiswrapper.