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This is one of a number of pages about installing Kubuntu Linux on a Sony TX1XP laptop. To see the other pages go here
To get the wireless working:
sudo iwconfig eth1 essid "xxxxxxx" key s:yourwepkey
without wep, you'd want:
sudo iwconfig eth1 essid "xxxxxxx"
then
sudo ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.11 netmask 255.255.255.0 up sudo route add default gw 192.168.1.1
note that you need to replace 192.168.1.11 in the first line with a suitable ip address for your network, and 192.168.1.1 in the second line with whatever your default gateway is (most likely the ip address of your wireless access point - the ip on the wireless side, not the wired side).
then first time only, you may need to add
nameserver 192.168.1.1
to
/etc/resolv.conf
replacing the ip with whatever you use as your dns server.
On other laptops, I have used the following lines in /etc/network/interfaces
iface eth1 inet dhcp pre-up iwconfig eth1 essid "xxxxxxx" key s:yourwepkey
and then from the commandline
ifconfig eth1 up
I suspect that the pre-up command isn't working because of the sudo permissions setup in kubuntu, but this is only a guess. I'll probably create a shell script with the commands I need to enable the wireless and use that.
I found that with no network cable, the laptop would hang at startup while trying to establish a network connection:
Configuring network interfaces.... Waiting for network interfaces to come up...
Hitting Ctrl-C would let it skip over these and continue to boot, but you don't want to have to do that each time you start the machine.
sudo -s cd /etc/init.d/ vi networking
then replace this section:
start) doopt spoofprotect yes doopt syncookies no doopt ip_forward no
with this section, replacing the essid, wep key, ip address and gateway details as appropriate:
start) /sbin/iwconfig eth1 essid "xxxxx" key s:xxxx /sbin/ifconfig eth0 down /sbin/ifconfig eth1 192.168.xxx.xxx netmask 255.255.255.0 up /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.xxx.xxx doopt spoofprotect yes doopt syncookies no doopt ip_forward no
this doesn't actually prevent the hangs at startup, but it does bring the wireless network up. To prevent the hangs at boot
if [ "$VERBOSE" != no ]; then #ifup -a else #ifup -a >/dev/null 2>&1 fi
this more or less stops the boot up processing trying to establish a network at all, and leaves this to be setup manually once booting has finished.
This is a (more secure) alternative to WEP. You don't need to do this unless you are after WPA (PSK) support. The link at the end of this section has more details (and is where I got most of the info from).
Unpack the firmware
sudo tar xvzf ipw2200-fw*.tgz sudo cp ipw-*.fw /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/
Remove old ieee80211 drivers
sudo tar xvzf ieee80211*.tgz cd ieee80211-1.1.13 sudo sh remove-old
Remove old ipw2200 drivers
cd .. sudo tar xvzf ipw2200*.tgz cd ipw2200-1.1.0 sudo sh remove-old
Make the new ieee80211 drivers
cd .. cd ieee80211-1.1.13 make sudo make install
Make the ipw2200 drivers
cd .. cd ipw2200-1.1.0 make sudo make install
Get wpa_supplicant
sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant
Edit the configuration
sudo vi /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
I have
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ap_scan=1
network={
ssid="your_network_name"
psk="your_secret_key"
priority=5
}
More info on the configuration is at
/usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples/wpa_supplicant.conf.gz
Then reboot to make sure the new drivers are loaded.
Now to try and connect to your (WPA protected) network
sudo wpa_supplicant -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -D ipw -w -dd
Assuming that works, running iwconfig should show you your network. For future use, adding -B to the above call will run it as a background process, and removing -dd will make it a lot more quiet.
If there are problems, check the messages - I hit a problem with having an old /var/run/wpa_supplicant/eth1 file that it wouldn't remove itself. It wasn't until I removed the -B option that I saw the error message displayed.
Top get a DHCP lease
dhclient3 -pf /var/run/dhclient.eth1.pid -lf /var/run/dhclient.eth1.leases eth1
I stole most of this from http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=26623
However the above is (a) briefer, which as a reference for myself helps, (b) has the newer version numbers that are thus known to work on this machine.