Newbie converting from Windows Wireless Dell 700M

[muhith]

Mates, I am completely new to Knoppix and Linux in general. I was a Windows person until my last major virus attack and I am now running Knoppix from so called Live CD. I am really keen to get the Wireless N/W going but still cannot get the right steps. Hell, I can't even change to a different Hard Drive via this OS! My USB key show up as 'sda' - how do I change to the sda via the command prompt? This KWiFiManager shows me my WIreless Card is DISABLED. Any way, the story is that I downloaded the dell driver for my Wireless Card the Intel PRO/wireless 2200BG and dumped the drivers on my USB key and ran this ndiswrapper and pointed to sda/drivers/w29n51.inf to pick up the driver and then KWiFIManager shows my card as NOT CONNECTED. wlcardconfig shows there are no Wireless cards. But scanning for Wireless network gives me no joy. Also here are some drivers for my card at http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/ - should I be using them instead? I have no idea what I am doing - please HELP!

[Jacky]

I am sorry, I would like to help, but can't offer anything useful. With this latest Knoppix version, support for wireless appears pretty bad. There have been other people reporting problems with the Intel 2200BG. Elsewhere others have reported problems with ndiswrapper.

You will notice from this forum that there are few reports of people getting their wireless to work. I have only managed to get wireless to work by compiling new linux drivers from source code. The sourceforge site you mention contains source code for native linux drivers which you need to compile. But compiling new drivers is not so easy for someone just starting out, like yourself.

My best suggestion at this time would be to try wired ethernet access to the internet first. Support for ethernet is quite good.

Regards.

[ockham23]

Two suggestions for your WLAN problem:
1. Try again with Knoppix, but this time make sure that windows was completely shut down. Don't use windows hibernate/suspend, if you want to run linux!
2. If wireless still doesn't run, download Kanotix-2006-Easter-RC4 from http://kanotix.com. Kanotix is a Knoppix derivative with better support for wireless cards, including Intel 2200BG. But again, you must shut down windows completely before booting off the Kanotix cd.

[OErjan]

if you want to navigate the filesystem you use the comand cd like this,
cd / which means change directory to /
cd /home/knoppix =go to /home/knoppix
cd .. = go up one level (cd and two dot's)

to list content in directory use ls (smal "L" + smal "s" NOT one+s or is)
ls ./ = List current directory the ./ (dot slash) means this directory useful in other circumstances aswell.

to learn more about linux in te comandline try
http://floppix.com/labs.html
there you will get most of what you will ever need in linux comandline, especially if you use their floppydistribution as a testbed.
EDIT
oh yes, you have to mount the drive before you can reach it, easyest way is to just klick the icon on your knoppix desktop.
/EDIT

[malaire]

My USB key show up as 'sda' - how do I change to the sda via the command prompt?

If your USB key shows as 'sda', then partitions in it would show up as 'sda1', 'sda2', etc...

You must first mount a partition you want to use, and then you can access it at directory /mnt/sda1 or /media/sda1 for partition sda1 (I'm not sure which one your Knoppix-version uses).

If you see an icon on the desktop for your USB-key (e.g. labeled [sda1]) then just click on it, and that partition will be mounted automatically. You should also see the directory where it's mounted at (i.e. /mnt/sda1 or /media/sda1).
Then just use command cd /mnt/sda1 or cd /media/sda1 to change into that directory.