WEP for PrismII wireless Mdk 9.1/ new install issues.
 

I just installed Mdk 9.1 on my Dell laptop last night and have had a couple of problems. I am new to this, so please bear with me.

1. I am running a netgear wireless router on a Dlink 11mbps 802.11b card with 64 bit WEP encryption enabled, and have not been able to enter the WEP code to be able to get eth1 to connect. Is there any trick to this or does anyone advice for me?

2. On boot, Mdk seems to take an exceedingly long time (2min+) bringing eth0 up on boot. I do not have my 3com internal NIC hooked up (using wireless) and have not tried booting with the NIC plugged in, but my question is is whether there is a quicker way to bring up eth0 on boot even if there is no cable connected. I would like to have the option, i.e. I would like to have the service start on boot, but just not eat up 2 min of idle time while doing so....

3. Mdk doesnt seem to come with an APM daemon installed. I just switched from RH9 and apm -s to suspend the computer worked from the su acct in console with no configuration whatsoever. Im just wondering if Mdk comes with this or if i have to install it. (Havent had too much time to play with mdk yet and im lazy :o )


So far though, I like Mdk 9.1 for my laptop WAY better than Rh9....no dependecy problems with Xine, auto mnt of the windows partition....everything is there and its fast too. That makes me happy. Now if only i could get WEP to work....

1. Run the Network config from MCC (Mandrake Control Center). There is a place there to enter your WEP key when you configure eth1.

2. That seems a little strange, but not too hard to fix. You can disable eth0 from starting in the same place as above. If there comes a time when you have the cable plugged in and do want to use it, open a console, su to root and type service eth0 start and you should be all set there.

3. You need to install apm and apmd. They are on the disks, and you can just open a console, su to root and urpmi them. I have a Dell Inspiron 8200, but I have never gotten apm to work correctly. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough. I would be interested in knowing if you really do get it working.

You can see what I went through on my laptop here: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=1922 and here: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php?t=5364

Liquid,

Thanks for the reply. I found the WEP key, but its a shared key, and i cant get it to stick/ get recognized by the router. I dont know if I am totally braindead when entering the code, but it is an alphanumeric code im reading out of the router config...It worked in winXP when I put it in for WEP, but for some reason Mdk doesnt like it? Perhaps the format? And MCC hangs when i try to initialize new settings/change old settings for some reason. (says its not responding and gives me the option to kill the app) Ill look into the eth0 thing, it might be the cause of the hangups, thanks for the suggestion. Also,just to be sure, I would disable the eth0 in the Network part of MCC or in Services? As far as APM, im running a dell latitude c600 and ive had APM run well on my RH installations, and on an older Mdk installation. (release no. escapes me..perhaps 8.something?) I think that it has something to do with the BIOS, and whether or not it uses the older power management setup, or the newer ACPI standard. linux-laptop.net had an article about it not too long ago, and there is a laptop linux howto that addresses it also i believe.

You would disable eth0 in the Network portion of MCC. Then you can stop the service.

Make sure your WIRELESS_MODE is set to Managed or the Key won't work at all.

I tried to get acpi running on my comp, and managed to get it running, but it doesn't support suspend at this time (or at least, when I was trying it. It might now).

Have you tried running APM or ACPI on any other distros? Just wondering.... Im at work now so I really cant go beyond what I remember from tinkering this morning, so unfortunately ill have to post the results of my trials later tonight. As far as APM goes, I found a decent APM config article for an Inspiron 8200 here:

http://users.tpg.com.au/coldie/linux-dell-i8k2.html

The guy who wrote it is running Rock linux, but he might have some insight into getting it up and running on yours....Mine has worked so I guess ive been lucky....(knock on wood)

I haven't tried any other distros on my laptop for more than about a day so I really haven't gotten to tinker with it too much. I will take a look at that article when I get home and to my laptop. Thanks for the link.

I suspect the reason you're waiting so long for eth0 to come up is that it's set to get it's ip address via dhcp, and if it's not plugged in, the dhclient waits for a while for a response from a dhcp server that's never going to come, then it tries again, etc...if that's not the case, please disregard.

so, If you'd rather not disable eth0, then try setting eth0 up with a compatible *static* ip address for your network, then it should come up quickly, and if you were to stop/eject the wireless interface and plug in the cable, it should take over the network chores.

If you're using an ascii wep key as opposed to a hex wep key, try preceding the key with s: when you enter it, this is how the program that actually sets the key knows to interpret it as ascii and not hex (iwconfig).