Wireless Tips

Wireless not working? Try these tips!

look for a physical button

All too frequently, one will spend a whole bunch of time trying to configure a seemingly non-functional wireless only to realize later that there was a much simpler solution. First, look for a button or switch or combination of keys to activate/deactivate the wireless. For example, is there a button above the keyboard? a switch on the side? maybe Fn + F5 turns the wireless on and off?

lspci is your friend

The lspci command is a utility for displaying information about all PCI buses in the system and all devices connected to them. It will tell you about your wireless card, if there is one installed. In particular, it will tell you whether your wireless card has a Broadcom chipset (which, if it does, you'll need to install some stuff - see below).

ifconfig: am I connected?

The ifconfig command configures a wired network interface. It is a useful command for determining whether or not you're connected to a network AND which network interface is being used to connect (i.e. whether you're connected to a wireless or wired network).

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:46:0E:8C:D8
         inet addr:192.168.2.252  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
         inet6 addr: fe80::a00:46ff:fe0e:8cd8/64 Scope:Link
         UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
         RX packets:3588 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:624 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
         RX bytes:1050713 (1.0 MiB)  TX bytes:111359 (108.7 KiB)

This example shows that interface eth1 is connected (because it shows an inet address). To determine whether eth1 is the wired or wireless interface, use iwconfig

iwconfig: no wires!

The iwconfig command configures a wireless network interface. It is a useful command for determining which interface is being used for wireless networking.

INSERT EXAMPLE

dhclient

The dhclient command will look for a server that will give your laptop a network address. Run this command as a super-user (sudo).

• If you just type dhclient it will try all interfaces (wireless and wired)
• You can specify which interface you would like by typing dhclient [interface]

EXAMPLE: if you run iwconfig and discover that your wireless interface is eth2, then running dhclient eth2 will only try to connect your laptop to a wireless network

Broadcom chipset

So you've discovered that your wireless card has a Broadcom chipset, eh? Try these steps:

1. System > Administration > Hardware Drivers

   If present, select BROADCOM THINGY

2. Manual installation. Open a terminal and type the following command to install b43-fwcutter and fetch the firmware for you:

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

EXPLAIN: dhclient eth2 essid "freegeek"