I'm on-line

Yesterday I installed Zenwalk and thought that today I'd get the wireless configured and running. Well, that's happened. I can get online on my network, but only if all security is turned off. I need to figure out how to get it running in a secure way. Today's Blog focuses on how I've gotten to this point.

First, I installed Zenwalk. I was able to find a couple posts that basically stepped me through setting up the wireless card. These were on Slackplanet and on LinuxQuestions forums. I'll restate them here.

First, apparently Zenwalk does not include the kernel source on the CD. No big deal with the fast connection. So after getting booted up and online with the ethernet cable, I needed to get the source downloaded. Netpkg is really cool. I just launched that and selected the kernel-source that matched my kernel. Five minutes later and I was ready to go on.

Now I needed to download and install the software for my wireless card. I needed the Linux Tools v28. Also the ipw2200-1.0.8 drivers. Finally, I needed the ipw2200 firmware.

I put this all into the /usr/src/work directory, then the following.

A. cd /usr/src/work
B. tar zxvf [pathtopackage]ieee80211-[ver].tar.gz
C. cd ieee80211*
D. make
E. su -
F. make install
G. cd ../ && tar zxvf ipw2200-[ver].tar.gz && cd ipw* && make
H. su -
I. make install
J. cd /lib/firmware && tar zxvf [pathtopackage]/ipw-fw-2200-[ver].tar.gz
I. modprobe ipw2200

This got my wireless card up and running. It connected me right up to my neighbor's network. Not exactly what I wanted, but that would do for now. I found the next page that told how to configure WAP which I'm running on my network. So I did the following.

WPA-PSK

This is the security that my WAP offers, it�s a lot better than WEP but needs a helper daemon to work: WPA Supplicant. Download it to your /usr/src/ directory if you want, or wherever you store your source files. Unzip the archive and peer inside:

tar -xzf wpa*
cd wpa*

The README file contains lots of interesting information about WPA, but really you just need to head to the bit that tells you how to create the .config file that it uses to build wpa_supplicant to your�well�configuration. If you just want to use WPA-PSK then you�ll might be able to make do with my .config file. I�m not sure what the hell most of it means, but it works:

CONFIG_DRIVER_WEXT=y
# CONFIG_DRIVER_BSD=y
# CONFIG_DRIVER_NDIS=y
CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXTENSION=y
CONFIG_IEEE8021X_EAPOL=y
CONFIG_EAP_MD5=y
CONFIG_EAP_MSCHAPV2=y
CONFIG_EAP_TLS=y
CONFIG_EAP_PEAP=y
CONFIG_EAP_TTLS=y
CONFIG_EAP_GTC=y
CONFIG_EAP_OTP=y
# CONFIG_EAP_SIM=y
# CONFIG_EAP_AKA=y
CONFIG_EAP_PSK=y
CONFIG_EAP_PAX=y
CONFIG_EAP_LEAP=y
# CONFIG_PCSC=y

Though what I do know is that you have to remove or comment out anything that�s like this: CONFIG_DRIVER_IPW. Just make sure you have CONFIG_DRIVER_WEXT=y as above. So copy and paste all of that, or make your own configuration file, and install it:

touch .config
pico .config (i.e. put some stuff in it)
make
make install

This will install the daemon and some other things to /usr/local/sbin. Now to generate the string that your wireless adapter will beam out to your WAP for authentication. When you administered your WAP you�ll remember that you set a Network Key for WPK-PSK to use. For instance when I log into my WAP I go to the field that says �Network Key (8 ~ 63 characters)� and there�s my key. You�ll need this number in a minute.

You�re nearly there! Load up a terminal and type the following as root:

/usr/local/sbin/wpa_passphrase your SSID here copy + paste your network key here;

The SSID is the what you called your network (Wireless_Broadband in my case). The other bit is that number I told you�d need in a minute (the minute being now). This will generate a configuration file in this format:

network={
ssid="Your_Network"
#psk="Your_Network_Key"
psk="your very long string"
}

Now make the actual configuration file in /etc/:

touch /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
pico /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (insert the output from wpa_passphrase)

You should be able to connect to your WAP now! Ergh, what�s that? You want to know how to do that? Ok� this is what does it for me:

ifconfig eth1 up
wpa_supplicant -ieth1 -Dwext -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf &
dhcpcd -h 192.168.0.1 -G 255.255.255.0 eth1
route add default gw 192.168.0.1
iptables-restore < /etc/firewall.conf

You�ll possibly have to edit the following: the eth1 interface name, the dhcpcd bit (I use DHCP�and I know Debian doesn�t use dhcpcd) and the firewall bit, though you should have one configured. ;)

There, that�s it. I hope you find the above somewhat useful. Remember that Google is your friend and that�s where I found all the information above. Oh, and when I did it I had to use a patch to get it to broadcast DHCP packets! So count yourselves lucky that you�re doing all this now and not a few months back when I didn�t know why the fudge I couldn�t get an IP address!

I'm still not on the Internet with my network and WAP. I did disable my WAP to see if I was able to use it and I could without any problems. Turn on WAP and I get errors like it's not accepting the keys. I'm sure that I have the right keys.

So, now I'm temporarily at a standstill. I'll get back to work on this tomorrow.