Bringing Up Wireless Connections Automatically

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Robert L. Cochran wrote:

> How do I get Fedora Core 5 to automatically detect and set up my wireless 
> connection? I can see that it detects the Broadcom 43xx (I think it's a 4316) 
> integrated wireless controller, but the runlevel 5 scripts don't actually 
> detect and configure the connection with the essid and encryption key, then 
> do a dhcp call to get an IP address, the host name, and the DNS information.
>
> If I do this manually in a terminal as root:
>
> iwconfig eth1 essid hummr
> iwconfig eth1 key open xxxx...
> dhclient eth1
>
> The wireless connection comes up and Firefox can visit websites etc. But I 
> have 2 problems:
>
> The hostname isn't changed from localhost.localdomain to the one I want for 
> this machine (it should be supplied by my dhcp server)

In system-config-network, you can check Activate at boot, Obtain IP 
settings, and Obtain DNS information for the interface.  Under the DNS 
tab, don't set the Hostname field.  Reboot after making these settings, as 
the hostname only takes effect at boot.

I *think* that will do it.  I know there is some combination of options 
settable there that will do it.

> I'm only getting an 11 Mbps bitrate and I know this wireless connection can 
> do 54.

802.11g?  Does the WAP support it?  Is there an 802.11b device associated 
with the same WAP?  That will force g connections to run at 11Mpbs.

>
> and perhaps a third issue:
>
> The connection doesn't seem able to scan for available wireless networks, 
> either.

How are you testing this?   iwlist ethX scan will only scan if run as 
root.

>
> Thanks for any advice that can be supplied. I did look for this information 
> on fedorafaq.org and fedora.redhat.com. I also Googled.
>
> Bob Cochran 
>
>

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs