how can i get knoppix to see that i have wireless internet

[jlmcw18]

i am a newbie when it comes to this i tried knoppix before but i never had internet and i lost that boot cd. Now that i have internet i want to see if i can get knoppix up and running. how do i get knoppix to see my "Broadcom 802.11g Wireless NIC" and allow me to get to the internet. do i have to do anything or will it just automaticly see that and i will be able to get on. o yeah the router is a linkys router but i dont know what type it is. is that important? thanks

john

[Harry Kuhman]

Wireless NIC support is poor in Knoppix (a fault of the manufacturers only releasing Windows code and not true open source code for the drivers). 802.11g support is worse. It sounds like you are asking without even trying. I would suggest seeing if by some stroke of luck Knoppix does recognize the wireless interface. But if that fails I would suggest going with a wired connection. While there are some tricks you might be able to use to get Knoppix working with an unsupported interface, I expect you'll find it simpler to install Debian and track down a proper Linux driver for that card (if one exists) than gett9ing it working with Knoppix.

[UnderScore]

Broadcom does not support Linux at all. They give out no documentation of their chips & products and this results in no Linux drivers for broadcom wireless devices. This means that we must use a driver wrapper called ndiswrapper (http://ndiswrapper.sf.net). It is a translator driver that makes a network card driver for MS Windows work on Linux.

Normally the progression of how drivers work looks like:
Linux kernel -> Linux network driver -> network card

With Ndiswrapper, it looks like:
Linux kenerl -> ndiswrapper -> Windows network driver -> network card

So now you see that it requires not 1 but 2 pieces, the ndiswrapper & the windows driver. Suse 9.x and Whax include ndiswrapper. Knoppix 3.8.x and up should include ndiswrapper. You can follow the generic ndsiwrapper installation instructions at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Installation and you can find Network card info listed alphabetically by manufacturer at http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/List

[atrick-pay]

This shell script runs when ever my laptop boots to connect me to my network,
you'll have to put your info in the fields but this should probably work for you.
you will need to find and copy the Windows wireless driver (mine is called bcmwl5.inf)
to some where easier to find (like your Home)

#!/bin/sh
sudo /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -i ~/bcmwl5.inf
sudo /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -m

sudo /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid "Put your network id here if you have one" mode "managed" channel "6 put your channel here" enc "0000000000 put your encripion here"
sudo /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0
sudo ping 192.168.0.1 -c 2
sudo /sbin/pump -i wlan0

/bin/sleep 10