Comments on: Slackware 12 Wireless WPA using ipw2200

By: davidw

davidw — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:23:03 +0000

Thanks for letting me know Katie, glad you got it working.

By: Katie

Katie — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:11:53 +0000

Thanks!

Worked for me on slackware 12.1!

By: davidw

davidw — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:02:00 +0000

Thanks Hamish, good to know that this helped and that it is also relevant for Slackware 12.1

You have hit on the difference between Slack and many other distributions. Most offer some front end GUI to manage wireless connections and in effect store the SSID and any accompanying passwords in a DB. Slack relies on good old fashioned script editing.

You would need to amend /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf with the new network’s details as well as /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. This can be accomplished quickly and easily in a console window and will be finished before a GUI has sniffed the WAP, checked the password and failed to connect you.

After amending the files you would need to run the commands at the end of the post to connect.

What I have done in the past is include all my regularly used networks in the above files and commented out the ones I don’t need at that moment. That saves some typing.

You might like to see this thread at LinuxQuestions which discusses using a WPA GUI but the consensus is that amending the files by hand is the way to go. It is certainly the Slack way.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/wpa-not-working-slackware-12.1-656755/

Good luck!

By: Hamish

Hamish — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:41:53 +0000

This was a great help to me in getting my wireless connected on my laptop. I have a full router, and wireless is a big help when setting up my computer!

All the networking stuff is fine for Slackware 12.1.

What happens when you want to join another network? Wouldn’t hard-coding your ESSID into rc.wireless stop you from connecting to another network? I am new to wireless and Slackware, so forgive my ignorance!

By: davidw

davidw — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:49:18 +0000

Darkstar – you are pissed! Stop it right now. You naughty person! eth0 and eth1 are viable entities and deserve your respect. Remember the BBC Acorn! They are its children.

Need I say more?

By: Darkstar

Darkstar — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:15:51 +0000

And lo!From the hills they came, the hairy nerds of config, streaming down the drab slopes of despair as their Pairwise Ciphers failed to recognise the supplicant, slack kernel of ineptitude that pursued them, its hideous swollen purple modprobe rearing up against the darkening sky – final battle between eth0 and eth1 about to commence.

I could go on…………….