Getting wireless network working on Live CD...

mrmg · n00b Joined: 17 Feb 2004 Posts: 6 Location: London, UK

I've recently had a go at installing gentoo via ethernet cable and it all went well after working out all my problems with these forums and I managed to get a nice system setup but it was a bit of a bodge job. I want to reinstall from scratch with a fresh install of Gentoo and to get all my mistakes the first time round correct however my internet connection now goes through a wireless network and it doesn't get detected on start up where as it used to detect it all fine with the ethernet connection.

My router is a LinkSys WRT54G and it works fine in Windows but I really want to use Linux now as my only operating system as I have no need for windows anymore so would love any information anyone could give for where I should start looking.

The only thing I knew to try was dhcpcd eth0, and I also tried it with dhcpcd ath0 but neither seemed to work.

Thanks in advance.
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MG

nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

what wireless nic do you use to connect to your router?
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I'm really wondering what Lovechild is doing nowadays...

mrmg · n00b Joined: 17 Feb 2004 Posts: 6 Location: London, UK

I use the Linksys Wireless-G PCI Card from the same range.

I have given my wireless network a name that shows up when I connect to it in windows, do I maybe need to specify this somewhere before it will connect?
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MG

nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

AFAIK there are no Linux drivers available for this card. I'm sorry.
Please feel free to correct me - it used to be like this. Maybe I'm not aware of recent changes in this matter.
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I'm really wondering what Lovechild is doing nowadays...

mrmg · n00b Joined: 17 Feb 2004 Posts: 6 Location: London, UK

I've found a site that lets you use the windows drivers to get the card working.

http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/wlan/install.php

Does anyone know if I would be able to install this when booting from the Live CD or if it's best to install the system first using ethernet cable and then installing these drivers afterwards?

Cheers,

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mg

nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

mrmg · n00b Joined: 17 Feb 2004 Posts: 6 Location: London, UK

Right! I've got it all working at last. Just for anyone else who might be having simialr problems.

I installed did the installation with a ethernet cable to my router and used the mm-sources as my kernel (2.6.3). I used genkernel --makeconfig and set a few custom settings... didn't really change anything of note, just made sure wireless networking and stuff were there. Then, once I rebooted and was able to log on I downloaded and installed ndiswrapper and ran it's default script. Pointing it in the right direction got everything sorted and I'm currently emerging X. The only problem I have left is how to install this so it starts on boot. It looks like the script with ndiswrapper sets it all up from what my n00bie mind can understand but when I reboot nothing seems to work so I have just run everything again to get my network up but obviously I'd rather now have to do that.

BTW, thanks for your help mate.
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MG

nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin