getting started with wlan

[Al Johnson]

On Sunday 21 March 2010, Kai-Martin wrote:
> On 03/21/2010 03:00:52 AM, William Kenworthy wrote:
> > Just a point ... why modules?
> 
> Because the manual suggested to load the modules in the same section
> as the image of the kernel and of the image of the root file system.
> 
> > you only need the module step if you are changing from the
> > matching kernel so need to change them.
> 
> I'll add an explaining comment to the wiki manual.
> 
> > Sorry cant help with wifi - I find that mokoconnect and similar gui's
> > are too flaky - manual is more reliable.
> 
> Ok, why not.
> I am only half fluent with the necessesary commands. On my
> laptop I used to call  wpa_supplicant with some fancy config file.
> The wlan device to talk to seems to be eth0, right?
> 
> Most of the time when I check with ifconfig, there is no decice eth0.
> Presumably this is, because the wlan chip is xswitched off.
> How do I manually switch the wlan chip on and off?
> How do I make sure, die wlan device is not shut off again by some
> power saving application?

In SHR WiFi is powered on and off through FSO's Resource handling.This is 
usually set to 'auto' so it will be powered up if an app requests the WiFi 
resource, and shut down when nothing is requesting it. You can force it to 
'enabled' or 'disabled' if needed. You can do this with the Settings app under 
Connectivity, or direct through dbus with mdbus2, dbus-send or similar.

> I just found the wiki page on wlan connectivity:
> 	http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Wifi
> However, the commands there assume a working eth0 device.
> So I have to deal with that first.

See above. I saw 'linksys' in your scan results. Mokonnect never sees my 
wrt54g, and I have to use 'wmiconfig -i eth0 --power maxperf' to get a 
reliable connection when setting up with wpa_supplicant.

> ---<(kaimartin)>---
> 
> PS: The search utility in the wiki seems to be broken. The term
> "Wifi" could not be not be found, even though there is a page
> called like that.

The internal search engine is bordering on useless, which is why search is set 
up to use google by default instead. If you use NoScript, RequestPolicy or 
similar to block the google search then it falls back to the useless internal 
engine.