Configure wireless by hand

[R. G. Newbury]

"I've got a little netbook and I've put a copy of Fedora 10 on a USB
stick. If I boot up using runlevel 5, I can use the wireless via
NetworkManager. These netbooks don't have the speediest processors so
I'd like to use runlevel 3 most of the time. I haven't been able to get
the wireless to work that way. How can I configure wireless by hand?"


Before NetworkManager got it's act together in F10, I used the following 
'wifi-config' script to get wireless working (in F6 and F8). You do need 
the /etc/resolv.conf file to point to the correct DNS servers for 
whereever you are. I added the domains for my two main use points 
(office and home) and the nameserver IP's to resolv.conf and chmod'd it 
to 644, so NM does not over-write it.
/etc/resolv.conf looks like this:
domain mydomain
search on.aibn.com rogers.com mydomain
nameserver 64.71.255.198
nameserver 198.235.216.134
nameserver 192.168.1.1   # the router as a last gasp try..

My wifi-config script looks like this (substitute your wireless driver 
for 'iwlagn'):

#!/bin/bash
/sbin/ifdown eth0
hostname=myhostname
/sbin/ifdown wlan0
/sbin/modprobe iwlagn disable_hw_scan=1
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 key restricted
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 key 12345678901234567890123456  # WEP
#/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 key 
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234  #WPA
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid my-site-funny-name   #essid LAST...
# if all else fails try a command like this, too
#/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 inet 192.168.1.81 netmask 255.255.255.0
/sbin/ifup wlan0         # bring it up
# and run ifconfig to see what we got
/sbin/ifconfig
~

Geoff
-- 
         Please let me know if anything I say offends you.
          I may wish to offend you again in the future.

          Tux says: "Be regular. Eat cron flakes."