Adam Williamson wrote:
> Nope. Read archives. Mandrake (in common with some other distros)
> doesn't parse the wireless.opts file. Instead, there are wireless keys
> for the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX files (where ethX is
> eth0, eth1, eth2 etc). If you set WIRELESS_ESSID="yourESSID" and
> WIRELESS_ENC_KEY="yourkey" in this file then Mandrake will parse them
> when bringing the connection up (which it ought to do once cardmgr
> recognises the card). With the correct settings in this file on my
> laptop, when I boot or plug the WLAN card in, the connection is brought
> up and the key is set, and everything works. Neato. :)
The system needs two things to make the card work:
1) Access to the network
2) Configuration parms, such as IP address, gateway, DNS, DHCP/Static, Boot
YES/NO
You get (1) automatically *if* cardmgr recognizes the card. In 9.0 it
doesn't. Cardmgr recognizes cards from signature info contained in
/etc/pcmcia/config, which also includes config.opts and misc.conf from the
same directory. If you add the entry
card "Linksys WPC11 11Mbps 802.11b WLAN Card"
version "The Linksys Group, Inc.", "Instant Wireless Network PC
Card"
bind "orinoco_cs"
to any of these 3 files (misc.conf is what I use), then it *will* recognize
the card and automatically start the network (you can also use the manfid
approach, but my impression is that the above is more generic).
However, that will fail, because the install wizard never let you get to the
configuration part. The driver for the Linksys card, orinoco_cs, is not in
the list of drivers you can select.
You can get by this once you're installed. If you manually add the entry
above to /etc/pcmcia/misc.conf and remove/insert the card, cardmgr should
correctly detect the card (you might need to reboot). If you fire up MCC
and choose Network, you'll see that it now "knows" that you have an eth0
running from orinoco_cs. If you execute the wizard and choose expert mode,
you can then deliberately pick a "wrong" driver (e.g. orinoco_plx). The
attempt to load it will fail, *but* the wizard will let you go on to enter
the configuration data, and by the time you get to the end of the dialog, it
will have successfully started the network.
The point is that you shouldn't have to go mucking around with MDK's scripts
(ifcfg-xxx) to get this to work, and in fact you don't. You just have to
add the card description that ought to be in the pcmcia-cs package to start
with, and then fool draknet (or whatever) into accepting your configuration
information.
