[CS-FSLUG] Locked Up Laptop - Can't Reboot

[Don Parris]

On 3/31/06, Don Parris <gnumathetes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Alan Marsh <amarsh at abed-nego.com> wrote:
> > Don,
> >
> > Could you give us some more details... like the make and model of the
> > card, the distro you are running and what you used for a driver?
> >
>
> I'll follow up a bit more later, but I'm running Ubuntu Linux 5.10 on
> a Dell Latitude C610 laptop.  The NIC is a Linksys G (Broadcom 4318).
> I followed the instructions on the Ubuntu wiki:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper?action=show&redirect=SetupNdiswrapperHowto
>
> The main issue was making sure the wlan interface was configured
> properly to match the settings of the router.  If you don't have a
> match, you won't get far.  Like I said, more later.
>
>
> > I have a HP zv6170us laptop running Gentoo (64 bit) (dual boot with XP Pro
> > due to Windows only BIOS updates and other nonsense from HP) and it has an
> > internal broadcomm card that I have not yet setup with ndiswrapper... but
> > part of me would just like to buy a nic card that just works out of the
> > box...
> >

O.k., here's the follow-up:

The linksys card is a WPC54Gv3.  I am using the NDIS utility, which
was fairly straightforward, using the Ubuntu documentation.  Once I
got the driver installed, it was a matter of figuring out what
settings to use, and those are based on the router.  The main elements
to be concerned with, at least in my case, were:

ESSID - essentially the network's name
Channel/Frequency
Security Mode - WEP/WPA(2)
Security Key

For each of these, all devices need to use the same setting.  For
this, you use iwconfig, which is the wlan equivalent to ifconfig. 
You'll also want to ensure that you kill eth0 to ensure your wlan
device gets all the attention.  I think once you get it working you'll
be able to revive eth0, but I haven't tried that yet.

I did, as I mentioned previously, have a problem where I had tried to
set my LAN to use WPA via the router config page.  However, I think I
have to use the WPA Supplicant (also mentioned on the Ubuntu wiki) to
make that work.  So I switched to WEP for now.  The problem was that,
even using iwconfig, the change of key didn't take hold.  I had to
manually edit /etc/network/interfaces to set the WEP key.

I had tried to fix the key using the GUI, but that caused my first
freeze.  I knew I was on the right track then, because that was when
the link light on the NIC flashed.  After fixing the key entry in the
interfaces file, I took wlan0 down, and then up (sudo ifdown/up
wlan0), and tried using ping.  It worked but then froze again.  I
simply rebooted (using my yank-the-battery trick), loaded the driver,
brought wlan0 up again, and then made it permanent (sudo modprobe
ndiswrapper -m).

After that, I successfully pinged a google IP, and launched Firefox to
browse the web a bit.  I ran the update utility and added an
application or two.  Now that I understand a little better, I probably
could do it in a few minutes instead of a day.


--
DC Parris GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/
gnumathetes at gmail.com
"Hey man, whatever pickles your list!"