wireless config question

[John Heim]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jürgen Dengo" <jyrgen.dengo at gmail.com>
To: <blinux-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2007 10:06 AM
Subject: wireless config question


Hello. I'm using a debian echy system, patched with lenny updates and a 
focus 40 braille display. My question is, how can I configure my wireless 
network using only my braille interface. I also remember from my ubuntu 
times, that while configuring the wireless network in command line, it kept 
forgetting those entries I made.


Oh, I was going to say that it probably doesn't matter that you have a 
braille display but I think that what you mean is that you want to do it at 
the command line. I don't even have a GUI on my laptop so it didn't occur to 
me that most people probably use GUI tools for this.

The command you need is iwconfig. If you google for that, you'll find plenty 
of tutorials. But essentially, what you will do is say:

iwconfig <interface> essid <essid>

where interface is something like eth0 and essid is the essid on your 
wireless router. You probably already know the essid of your router. But if 
not you can get it with the iwlist command.  For example, the essid of my 
router is tsunami. So I type:

iwconfig eth0 essid tsunami

Actually, I configured my wireless router to use 128 encryption so I have to 
pass the encryption key too:

iwconfig eth0 essid tsunami key 3959387282...

I created an alias for the above command so that I wouldn't have to retype 
it each time:

alias connect='iwconfig eth0 essid tsunami key 495jwkdhj83764'

After you issue the iwconfig command, you will still probably  have to 
request an IP address. FThere are several tools you can use for that. I use 
dhclient. So I type:

dhclient eth0

Buttabing, buttaboom!

If you want your wireless interface configured automatically when you turn 
your laptop on, you'd edit the file /etc/network/interfaces. You should 
google for tutorials on that because it's too complicated to explain in an 
email message.