Remaster for Wifi thin client (wifi not working)

[rslaqui]

Hi I'm a newbie tring to make a Thinclient OS out of Knoppix.

My goal is to have a ThinStation like solution but having much more contron on what happens on the client and avove all a single ThinClientOs for a withe range of x86 obsolete PC-clients.

Knoppix has by far the best in terms of hardware support and I have managed to boot to a strip X session with only the thin client app. (not desktop manager) Sound and all hardware detection still seams to work fine.

I have a HD install a some scripts to strip out all things I've managed to determine that are not needed to make things work.

Now I'm trying to make clients to auto connect to a specific WiFi with Wep encryption. So I' uninstalled network-manager and edited

/etc/network/interfaces


##
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid Network name that has spaces
wireless-key wepkey
##

ETH0 works but not wlan0

*******
Then I saw that the sequence of commands

ifconfig wlan0 down
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid "MAESTRIA IT" key 12345ABCDE
dhclient wlan0

did the trick once I've booted so... (just to try)
I placed a Script at /etc/rc5.d/S27nethack

##
ifconfig wlan0 down
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid "nteName WithSpaces" key wepkey
dhclient wlan0
##

But it not just doesn't work at boot it does not work when ran by hand at shell.

TESTING and TESTING again I found that the line:

iwconfig wlan0 essid "nteName WithSpaces" key wepkey

Works when ran by typing it at the Command Line but not when with in a script.

If that line runs in a script the following dhclient wlan0 can't get a IP address.

Any clues on what is going on and how to make an automatic connection to a WEP WiFi at boot up?

Thanks.

[klaus2008]

I think that there are two places where customizations are usually done. The first one is the configuration file /etc/rc.local and the second one would be a file knoppix.sh in the directory where the huge KNOPPIX file resides. Both files are read during system start, but be aware that the commands in those files are issued while being the user root. If you need to run the commands while being the user knoppix then you might try out the file .bashrc in the home directory of user knoppix.

[rslaqui]

Thanks for the info I replaced the instruction to the end of rc.local script but still no changes. It only works when typed or pasted into the CL if run from any script the command

iwconfig wlan0 essid "MAESTRIA IT" key 12345ABCDE

does not work
also the settings in /etc/network/interfaces seam to be useless

[utu]

@rslaqui Greetings, rslaqui.
Klaus2008 has given you several good answers already.
Perhaps an example will help.
Here's an excerpt of what I use, only my wifi is eth1.
This assumes you have /etc/rc.local owned by root, and executable.

#!/bin/bash
#
# rc.local
#
WIFI="wlan0"; MODE="Managed"
dhclient -r $WIFI; ifconfig $WIFI up
iwconfig $WIFI essid XXXXX key XXXXXXXXXX mode $MODE
dhclient $WIFI
#
exit 0

[rslaqui]

""""""""Solved""""""

Script still not working (previous post still not tested)
but /etc/network/interface
settings do



***********
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
pre-up ifconfig wlan0 up
post-down ifconfig wlan0 down
wireless-essid NetWork
wireless-key WepKey
***********


Thanks a lot hope this helps some else.

[Forester]

So I uninstalled network-manager and edited

/etc/network/interfaces


##
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid Network name that has spaces
wireless-key wepkey
##

ETH0 works but not wlan0

You were so close ... you need:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
     wireless-essid "Network name that has spaces"
     wireless-key wepkey

Indentation is necessary. You used "" around the network name everywhere else but not here. For wireless adapters that can be unplugged you might use allow-hotplug instead of auto.

With this you don't need to run ifup or ifconfig or iwconfig or dhclient yourself so you need no modification to /etc/rc.local.

I have just tried this. I used the cheat code nonetworkmanager (because I have not uninstalled the NetworkManager - yet) and network connection was automatic.

You say you have unintalled the NetworkManager. Please check that the file /etc/init.d/network-manager has gone (or at least is not executable). If it is still there and executable you will need the cheat code as I did.

If you are stripping down the Knoppix start up then you may have already edited /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig. You could remove the bit that starts the NetworkManager leaving just the ifup -a & that you'll find in the start up of any normal hard drive Linux installation.