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<font size="-1"><font face="Arial">Greetings,<br>
<br>
I've worked on this for days, and can't quite seem to get something
respectable together...<br>
<br>
I have acquired an ultralight notebook for field and away-from-office
work. It has built-in ethernet, and I bought a Belkin 54g (7011) card.
I'd like to do the following:<br>
<br>
* Ethernet - rarely used, and usually DHCP'd when connected. Already
have ifplugd handling this.<br>
<br>
* Wireless:<br>
<br>
- Office - I have a Belkin 54g (7001) PCI card in my desktop
machine, with which <br>
I create an ad-hoc network. It's presently unsecured, but I'd
like to at least use<br>
WPA ultimately. Don't want to buy an AP for the office yet, as
this is the only<br>
wireless link here.<br>
<br>
- Roaming - Am always attending other offices and sites with all
manner of AP's,<br>
running all manner of security schemes. Also, we work with
Internet Cafe's, <br>
wireless hotspots, etc. Ideally, I'd like to be able to
pre-configure some known,<br>
probably secured nets for automatic association, and the
ability to fall back to<br>
association with anything we can find (doubtlessly unsecured,
and broadcasting<br>
an SID we can associate with.<br>
<br>
I'm running Debian (testing), and would like to achieve all of the
above with just ifplugd, wpa_supplicant, and hotplug (for the sake of
simplicity). I can get all the different bits running (except
wpa_supplicant, which seems to choke on either the configuration or the
office network (the ad-hoc one mentioned above) I'm testing in). When I
tested wpa_supplicant by hand at build/install-time, it seemed to be
working (the debug messages showed it finding the peer, etc).<br>
<br>
Presently, I do the following:<br>
<br>
- Load the ndiswrapper module at boot-time (/etc/modules)<br>
- Have hotplug watch for the card<br>
- Insert the card<br>
- Hotplug instantiates wpa_supplicant (with -Bw -ixxx -cxxx)<br>
- Hotplug ifup's the interface<br>
- Debian's 'interfaces' file includes:<br>
<br>
mapping hotplug<br>
script grep<br>
map wlan0<br>
iface wlan0 inet dhcp<br>
wireless_essid mynetname<br>
wireless_mode ad-hoc<br>
<br>
(without the wireless_ parameters above, I can't associate with
the <br>
office ad-hoc net, although I'm worried that, with them, I
won't be<br>
able to roam, etc...)<br>
<br>
- dhclient executes as expected (unless I omit the wireless_ params
<br>
from interfaces)<br>
<br>
- Can successfully ping other hosts<br>
<br>
- Remove card<br>
<br>
- Interface comes down as expected, but hotplug fails to "killall
wpa_supplicant",<br>
leaving that process to consume about 95% processor time until
the <br>
machine starts to heat up. wpa_supplicant can't be subsequently
<br>
shut down (machine needs to be rebooted).<br>
<br>
Sorry about the long-winded explanation, but I wanted to be as clear
as possible :-)<br>
<br>
How should I go about all of this? I can post my current config, if
needed - but I'm probably going about it all wrong, anyways...<br>
</font></font>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Cheers,
Mattt.
aust: 0414 830 989
int'l: 614 1483 0989
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:mattt@abovenetworks.net">mattt@abovenetworks.net</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://abovenetworks.net">http://abovenetworks.net</a>
Windows XP: 64 bit upgrade to a 32-bit patch for a 16-bit
GUI shell running on top of an 8-bit operating system
written for a 4-bit processor by a 2-bit company who cannot
stand 1 bit of competition (but it's better than a Mac!).
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