I am using Open SUSE, fedora 8 and mandriva 2008. I have finally managed to get my DLINK DWL G510 wireless card detected.... now how do i configure it to access my wireless home network (used for sharing internet) The network is WPA PSK encrypted....

I would like to know more about using ifconfig, iwconfig commands.....
Since there is config files for everything in linux...can i just edit some config file instead of using the above commands???

Thanks in advance

With Mandriva, when you set up the wireless interface via the Control Center, there will be a selection where you can choose WPA Pre-Shared Key (it may be shown as WPA-PSK). As long as the key you choose is the same in the Mandriva setting as it is on your router, you should be able to communicate successfully between the laptop and the router.

I have used openSUSE in the past and I know it has a similar setting for the network config in YaST. I have not used Fedora.

SuSE has a configuration wizard in YaST for configuring your network. Most of these settings are saved in /etc/sysconfig/networking/ifcfg-<device>. You can also use the network manager applet. Then you can enter the wpa-psk once and if you change wireless networks, kwallet (on kde) is used to save the PSK key, so you only need to remember your user password. This allows using a strong (random) pre-shared key that is too long and complicated to remember. If you don't use the nm applet, the system will use the ifup/down scripts and get the key from the ifcfg-<device> config file. SuSE uses this file or the nm applet to construct a config file for wpa_supplicant on the fly. The /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf isn't used.

Thanks for your help.....

What is the network manager appelet?? Where can i find it???
Well i have already tried configuring network using YAST, i does not seem to work for me...... can somebody point me to a step by step tutorial that uses the command line????

If you use YaST2 to configure the device, the first option is whether or not to use the network manager or scripts to start the network. Select the network manager. If I remember correctly, the package will even be installed at that point. I think that which program is used depends on whether you use kde or gnome. I use kde, and the knetworkmanager program is used. It integrates with kwallet to save the essid/psk information. Later when you need to reconnect you will be asked for your kwallet password. So you would just need to remember that password and not the passphrases for several wireless networks.

I use a random 32 byte key (64 digit hex) generated from the /dev/random device ( copied with dd). So there is no way I could remember such a password or that a hacker might guess it. The downside is that it is stored on my laptop so if it were stolen, I would have to change it at once.