Daniel Haude wrote:
Check out module-assistant for automatically building extra modules for your kernel.Hello, this message is all the more strange since I had wireless up and running with Debian once. But that system got hosed about a year ago for some reason or another, and now I've got it set up again and I'm completely stumped with the WLAN thingy. $ lsusb Bus 005 Device 003: ID 2001:3c00 D-Link Corp. [hex] DWL-G122 802.11g rev. B1 [ralink] OK, this is a Ralink RT2500 chipset. I've built the rt2500usb module and loaded it. ifconfig wlan0 up worked.
A standard command to check for available networks is "iwlist scan". Run as root.I'd like to connect to the public network that's set up around the campus. What do I have to do to make it happen? Everybody else's Windoze and Mac laptop simply connects to whatever network it happens to find.
Try building with module assistant. It will help you prepare your system for building. run dmesg after loading the module to see any error-messages and other info. It should report your card detected. Post here if there are messages you don't understand. Never used the usb variety, might need something extra loaded for that to work.There is a utility with the promising name "iwspy", but that tells me: wlan1 Interface doesn't support wireless statistic collection Don't know what that means except that it doesn't work. There are two Debian packages for this chipset: rt2500-source and rt2x00-source. They provide different modules, but neither really seem to work.
Once you have the module loaded and running ok, check out the config file /etc/network/interfaces (which has a manual page). Together with the results from iwlist, you will have the info you need to make "ifup ra0" or "ifup wlan0" work.
For gui use, both kde and gnome have offerings, once you have the needed modules loaded.