[CS-FSLUG] wifi problems

[Dave & Ella McMullen]

Hi Tim,
     I tried your three line suggestion from Terminal.  Still couldn't
ping the router. None of the commands failed, or gave me an error
(except 'ping')

Tim Young wrote:
> Hi,
> I do not know about your hardware or much about the distro.

Mint is a Debian based distro - actually built from Ubuntu.


> 1) If the problem is just that DHCP is not working, then you should be
> able to manually assign an IP address, route, and nameserver, and surf
> happily away. Of course, this is a temporary fix until you can determine
> what is wrong with your dhclient...
> Try the following:
> sudo ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.50
> sudo route add default gw 192.168.0.1
> sudo echo nameserver 192.168.0.1 > /etc/resolv.conf
> Then try surfing.
...............
> 3) if all the above commands work (no errors), but you cannot ping the
> router, then you could have:
> a) the wrong wireless key - double-check the key
> b) mac-address filtering stopping you - can you log into the WAP over a
> wire and check this out?

I have no WEP or WPA set up on my modem.  I thought the first thing was
just to get it working, and then worry about security.  Probably just turn
of the wireless.  I only need it on the laptop for travel.

>
> If the driver has an issue, that is a distro specific issue. You could
> possibly rebuild the kernel from source, do a kernel upgrade (yum /
> apt), or use a network wire...

Mint has a modified download system/packagemanager.  I downloaded their
'fwcutter' and the program asked if I wanted it to download the firmware.
I answere yes, and the program proceded to operate, and exited without
errors, saying that it had finished the job.  I haven't beren able to
figure out how to check and see if the right modules are in the right
place and being properly loaded at boot.  I don't even know for sure what
the modules would be called.  (I suppose 'bcm43??' or 'b43??' since it is
a Broadcom 'card'.

>
> - Tim Young
>

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