Tyler Smith wrote:
I just went through this the other day for the first time. I needed a driver (madwifi), wireless-tools, and wpa-supplicant (for WPA). I am running Sarge and some of these packages have to be up to date so I got them from backports.org. I am not sure if you really need ifplugd but it helps configure/deconfigure your interfaces when they appear and disappear.Hi, I'm a little confused by the available how-to's etc. regarding getting wireless working on my laptop. There is a fair bit of material available, but much of it is old and/or contradictory. If someone could help point me towards a good reliable source to get going that would be great. I'm using: Debian Etch, freshly installed and upgraded Linksys model no. WPC55AG notebook adapter card Toshiba Satellite 2410 laptop (I have to wait for my thinkpad...) Thanks! Tyler
I can't remember all the details but I think that hotplug will get your device installed and then ifup/ifdown will have scripts added by the above packages to get your card working correctly. I put all the settings for wireless-tools and wpa-supplicant in /etc/network/interfaces and the scripts for those packages used that information to setup the card when it is plugged in.
This was the first time I did this but it worked for me. You need a driver, wireless tools and possibly other packages if you need encryption. I read most of the documents (man pages, docs, and their websites) for these packages to understand how they all work together and I would recommend you do the same otherwise you might waste many hours trying different settings without understanding what is going on. I did that first and it didn't work. :-)
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ ( I think WEP is included in the wireless tools)
http://madwifi.org/ http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/