[nflug] [Fwd: [social] Wireless Networking in Linux - Redux]

[anthonyriga]

Yea I know your pain. I have some sucess with Knoppix
and wireless, But you are right its a nightmare
getting wireless to work . Drivers are the big issue. 

--- Greg Neumann <DadNeumann at verizon.net> wrote:

> Just for comments:
> This poor guy's been fighting this for awhile. My
> instinct is that 
> hardware is the core of his issue. Windows specific
> hardware has always 
> been a nightmare for Linux. Any comments or ideas??
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 	[social] Wireless Networking in Linux -
> Redux
> Date: 	Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:57:44 -0500
> From: 	Rod Engelsman
> Reply-To: 	social at openoffice.org
> To: 	social at openoffice.org
> 
> 
> 
> Gentlemen, Comrades, Friends, and Associates:
> 
>    I have a statement to make that you will all
> probably find 
> provocative -- perhaps even offensive -- but I
> believe it is true 
> nonetheless.
> 
> "At the current state of the art, the Linux
> operating system is a 
> security hazard when employed on computers
> communicating via wireless 
> networks."
> 
> Which is to say, unless you are a) very lucky or
> very careful in 
> selecting hardware, b) reasonably proficient with
> the command line and 
> configuration scripts, and c) willing to do a BUNCH
> of homework and 
> experimentation, setting up a secure wireless
> network is probably beyond 
> your capabilities and may be entirely impossible.
> 
> We all know that an unsecured network is... well,
> insecure, duh. And WEP 
> is easily broken with modern hardware and freely
> available GNU/Linux 
> hacker tools. The only decent wireless security is
> some flavor of WPA, 
> preferably WPA-RADIUS with 802.1x authentication.
> This provides 256-bit 
> encryption with rotating keys and centralized
> challenge-response 
> authentication. For home users WPA-PSK (which
> utilizes pre-set keys for 
> authentication, rather than a central server) is
> reasonably secure.
> 
> I have three computers in the house -- four if you
> count this dual-boot 
> box as two, which it is in a very real sense, since
> what is a computer 
> without an OS? A Dell laptop that came with a
> wireless card, a Toshiba 
> laptop that I stuck a Linksys card into, and this
> box with a D-Link 
> wireless pci card. The Dell runs XP and the Toshiba
> runs FC4. The dual 
> boot box runs both.
> 
> Frankly, it was enough of a trick just to get the
> wireless cards working 
> at all under Linux. Fortunately, the D-Link card has
> an Atheros chipset 
> so it will work with mad-wifi. I "only" had to
> install a custom kernel 
> and screw around for half a day to get WEP to work.
> 
> The Toshiba required a distro with ndiswrapper to
> use the Windows 
> drivers since there are no Linux drivers for that
> card. First I tried 
> Ark Linux. That would only get a little way through
> the install before 
> it would eject the cdrom and reboot for no apparent
> reason -- it's now a 
> shiny coaster. Then I tried Mepis. I got it to
> actually install the 
> drivers and it worked unsecured, but for some odd
> reason every time I 
> would log into KDE it would launch three -- not 1,
> not 2, but 3 -- 
> instances of KWiFiManager that would sit there and
> blink and tell me it 
> couldn't connect, even though I could close them out
> and use Firefox 
> just fine. Weird.
> 
> So I got tired of trying to figure out where Mepis
> keeps the config 
> files -- what little I know of Linux is
> Redhat/Fedora -- and then the 
> stupid thing totally locked up on me, for about the
> 5th time -- 
> requiring a power-off reboot. Got out my FC4 discs
> and installed 
> something I halfway understand. Then I had to
> sneakernet a few packages 
> over to it and got the wireless working --
> unsecured. Let it do about 
> 198 updates -- no exaggeration -- and then installed
> ndiswrapper and 
> wpa_supplicant from ATRPMs. I have spent probably a
> week and a half now 
> Googling, asking around on newsgroups, and studying
> the sample config 
> files, etc. trying to get this all to work together.
> 
> And that's where I stand. I'm not an expert at
> Linux, but I'm also not 
> stupid, and I actually DO know a thing or two about
> networking. This is 
> just too hard, too convoluted, too poorly
> documented, and consists of 
> entirely too many moving parts. I have to face the
> reality that this 
> particular combination of hardware, software, and
> protocols simply may 
> not be capable of functioning.
> 
> Wireless networking is not particularly new. It's
> not an odd corner of 
> computing that one should maybe expect to have
> trouble with. How many 
> people out there have laptops that they would like
> to connect wirelessly 
> to the Internet? More and more every day. The Linux
> community HAS to get 
> a better handle on this.
> 
> It baffles me why some of the major distributions
> don't tackle this head 
> on.
> 
> Rod
> 
> BTW, it takes all of about 10 minutes, tops, to set
> up a secure wireless 
> network with "that other" OS.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> nflug mailing list
> nflug at nflug.org
> http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug
> 



	
		
__________________________________ 
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
nflug mailing list
nflug at nflug.org
http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug