Re: Help needed in getting WiFi working with Debian

[Foss User <fossist@gmail.com>]

Thanks everyone. I got my WiFi up. Sharing the details here in case it
helps someone in future.

1. aptitude update; aptitude install firmware-iwlwifi
2. modprobe -r iwl3945; modprobe iwl3945 (I am not sure whether step
was required)

But I got this message in /var/log/messages - ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP):
wlan0: link is not ready

So, I thought I would do this.

3. ifconfig wlan0 up

The amber indicator started glowing (but not blinking as it should if
it is connected to a WiFi network) and I still got the same error
message in /var/log/messages

4. ifconfig wlan0 down

Turned it down since I thought it didn't help. The amber light went off.

5. Right clicked the network icon in gnome panel and selected Edit
Connections, went to Wireless tab and clicked Add. Entered SSID,
selected Mode as Infrastructure, left the BSSID field blank, copied
MAC address from the output of ifconfig wlan0, left MTU to
'Automatic'.

6. Next went to 'Wireless Security' tab, selected 'WPA & WPA2
personal' and entered the WPA2 key I previously configured in the
wireless router.

On pressing 'Apply' button, it automatically started connecting and
successfully connected.

I have a question to the experts though. In step 5 and 6, I had to
manually configure wlan0. However, I never had to do such
configuration for eth1 when I was using Ethernet. Why so?