Setting up a USB WiFi adapter from the terminal

["Sam Kuper" <sam.kuper@uclmail.net>]

Dear all,

I've just installed Etch on a Thinkpad 240 and installed a Netgear WG111v3 USB WiFi adapter according to the instructions here. Now I need to configure it so that it will connect to my wireless access point (a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54, in case that's significant) over WPA-Personal using AES.

Suppose my access point's SSID was 'MyAccessPoint' and my WPA key was 'someoldwpakey', how would I go about doing this (without using any desktop/windowed utilities, because I don't have adesktop environment or window manager installed)?

Here's how far I've got.

I've read:

• http://wiki.debian.org/WPA
  
• man wireless
• man iwconfig
• man iwpriv
• man iwevent
• man interfaces
• man ifup
• man ifdown
• man iwspy
• man iwlist
• view /usr/share/doc/wireless-tools/README.Debian

I've made the following entry in /etc/network/interfaces:

[quote]

allow-hotplug wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

    wireless-essid MyAccessPoint

    wireless-key someoldwpakey

[/quote]

And if I now run 'ifup -a' then 'iwconfig' gives:

[quote]

lo     no wireless extensions

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any

         Mode:Managed  Frequency:1256.85 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated

         Bit Rate:54Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3

         RTS thr:2347 B    Fragment thr:2346 B

         Encryption key:off

         Power Management:off

         Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0

         Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0

         Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0  Missed beacon:0

[/quote]

Clearly, the Thinkpad isn't aware of the access point yet, so at this point, I'd be very grateful for any help you can offer!

Many thanks in advance,

Sam