Potentially n00bish, how do I create wlan0?

[shadebug]

I have wireless-tools and ndiswrapper installed. I've installed the appropriate driver via ndiswrapper. I've done an ndiswrapper -m, so the system knows which driver to use for wlan0. The system, however, does not know what wlan0 is... how do I figure that one out then?
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Abit kn9-sli, AMD64 3500+, 1024 mb ram, 7600GS GPU, 80GB SATAII, 20GB PATA

[shadebug]

in case it's important
#lsusb -v
gives me the information on that device
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Abit kn9-sli, AMD64 3500+, 1024 mb ram, 7600GS GPU, 80GB SATAII, 20GB PATA

[tlailax]

i just used iwconfig and ifconfig to configure according to the ndiswrapper howto and everything just worked. never actually had to create a wlan0 device file, nor do i recall ever seeing one.

[Matt126]

[Sorcerer'sApprentice]

[shadebug]

I followed sorceror's guide, seemed to do the same but with the default bit

still saying device not found. Any way I could point it to where it needs to be?
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Abit kn9-sli, AMD64 3500+, 1024 mb ram, 7600GS GPU, 80GB SATAII, 20GB PATA

[{{Azrael}}]

look at #dmesg to make sure your Wireless card is indeed the device you've specified. Mine for example is net.eth2.

[shadebug]

dmesg says nothing about any network interface other than eth0, near as I can tell

I think it just hasn't picked up what the wireless card is and it's not associating it. Is there any way I can force it to figure it out?
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Abit kn9-sli, AMD64 3500+, 1024 mb ram, 7600GS GPU, 80GB SATAII, 20GB PATA

[rmh3093]

[emes]

[shadebug]

it just gives me a new prompt
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Abit kn9-sli, AMD64 3500+, 1024 mb ram, 7600GS GPU, 80GB SATAII, 20GB PATA

[mrv]

Do you see anything at dmesg output after you modprobed ndiswrapper?`

-mrv-

[shadebug]

yes I do and I'm suddenly getting useful info from iwconfig too

right, now this is showing that it's picked up the access point so the driver works up to a point, but everything else is doing nothing
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Abit kn9-sli, AMD64 3500+, 1024 mb ram, 7600GS GPU, 80GB SATAII, 20GB PATA

[Sorcerer'sApprentice]

[shadebug]

nah, I use mad address registering specifically to avoid that

OK, new problems

right, I did modprobe ndiswrapper and set the essid and did dhcpcd wlan0 and it all seemed to be working fine, apart from not connecting, near as I can tell the necessary information was there.

so I reboot to see if the bootscript is better at sorting these things out than me

it tells me to edit a etc file that I know I edited in the gentoo installation. I forget what file it was (though you guys probably know already) and added if(alternative to config goes here) wlan0="dhcp" or something to that effect mimicking the line above it which had eth0 instead.

Reboot and wlan0 isn't recognised. Modprobe ndiswrapper, device is recognised but the access point isn't. Now i know the access point is running if I manage to post this.

Now the ndiswrapper how to suggests editing /etc/modules but I don't have one of those... shame

back to the matter at hand though, actually connecting.

if i say iwconfig wlan0 scan I get all the details of my access point
which doesn't help because it doesn't hook up to it, what to do?
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Abit kn9-sli, AMD64 3500+, 1024 mb ram, 7600GS GPU, 80GB SATAII, 20GB PATA

[shadebug]

any ideas? it's so close I can feel it, I can't fail now
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Abit kn9-sli, AMD64 3500+, 1024 mb ram, 7600GS GPU, 80GB SATAII, 20GB PATA

[Sorcerer'sApprentice]

Have look at this HOWTO

It may require you to unmask a newer version of baselayout. This will enable to place parameters such as ESSID in the file /etc/conf.d/wireless, so it will be available on the next bootup.

Have you checked that you have wireless support compiled into the kernel? (see howto)
Have you yet managed to ping you access point?
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"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother ... The major problem is quite simply one of grammar..."

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[emes]

/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.{4,6} is the gentoo equivalent of /etc/modules
after you edit the file, run modules-update
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