newbie - network setup, wireless connection help

[jcalvert]

Hi. The last couple of days I have been trying to get online with Knoppix and SLAX - which I have been told are the two best Live distros. My problem with both is that neither can seem to "wake up" my wireless device.

I have an IBM Thinkpad R40 with a built-in "AIRONET Wireless Communications Cisco Aironet Wirless 802.11b" that I normally use with Win XP to connect to the Internet and LAN at work. I want a Live distro so I do not have to worry about a setup on my HDD.

Long story short, what the heck do I do to get my aironet card working? It does not light up, I cannot find it on a device list; I am rather clueless and frustrated.

I did run a configuration program and I found some options to enable the card for the kernel - newbie talk here - and since I do not have an Internet connection while in Knoppix I cannot tell you the exact syntax. Anyway, I think I was able to enable the card or driver, but still nothing shows up ... no blinking lights or anything, so I must be missing something.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can point me in some sort of direction to get this device working!

[grant_vallance]

Hi. The last couple of days I have been trying to get online with Knoppix and SLAX - which I have been told are the two best Live distros. My problem with both is that neither can seem to "wake up" my wireless device.

I have an IBM Thinkpad R40 with a built-in "AIRONET Wireless Communications Cisco Aironet Wirless 802.11b" that I normally use with Win XP to connect to the Internet and LAN at work. I want a Live distro so I do not have to worry about a setup on my HDD.

Long story short, what the heck do I do to get my aironet card working? It does not light up, I cannot find it on a device list; I am rather clueless and frustrated.

I did run a configuration program and I found some options to enable the card for the kernel - newbie talk here - and since I do not have an Internet connection while in Knoppix I cannot tell you the exact syntax. Anyway, I think I was able to enable the card or driver, but still nothing shows up ... no blinking lights or anything, so I must be missing something.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can point me in some sort of direction to get this device working!

Hello:

There are a number of ways this can be done: (1) if there are native drivers use them; but this is not likely; (2) use ndiswrapper, which allows the use of M$ drivers in GNU/Linux.

The first step is to identify which AIRONET chipset is being used. To do this:
[in a console as root] type the command: lspci

You should be able to interpret the output and find the chipset.

OR/

If you know where the driver is -- typically a *.inf file -- on your installation CD for the card you can try and use that with ndiswrapper.

The reason why id'ing the chipset is that then we can use alternative sources for the driver if you have misplaced your CD or ndiswrapper does not like working with that version of the driver.

To use ndiswrapper there is a guide under the sticky post Success with Knoppix 3.6 and Wireless Networking, which should provide an adequate guide written by myself.

If you have trouble let me know and I'll try and help. I have a reasonable success rate in getting people's cards going notwithstanding I am pretty new at this myself.

Regards,

Grant D. Vallance