Going Wireless in SUSE Linux 10.0

by admin @ 7:12 am. Filed under General SUSE, SUSE Tips & Tricks

Portability and independence are two things that people love, and will do things like this to get it (because, of course, Linux is so versatile). In my work at Novell CoolSolutions, one of the biggest topics that readers request articles about is setting up wireless networks. So, using SUSE 10.0 as the client machine(s), I have written an article on the subject. This article also explains a simple way to search for the most compatible hardware for your system. I kind of cheated and just asked the SUSE guys in Germany. The guy that responded, Joachim Gleissner, happens to be over the part of the SUSE Linux platform that deals with wireless NIC compatibility. He gave me some good info to go off. Here’s some info provided to me by Joachim when I asked which wireless NICs play well with SUSE 10.0:

“This depends to some degree on your requirements. First of all, you can find a list with WLAN chipsets and their support status here: http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_Adapters_(Wireless)“

“The page does not contain information about the quality of the drivers nor WPA support, though. I guess most people want 54Mbit/s and WPA support, which substantially reduces the choice. The Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 and 2915 chipsets fall into that category, but they are not available as PCMCIA cards. So it boils down to Atheros based cards for the moment. But even Atheros cards can not be recommended without restrictions, as SL10.1/NLD10 will not support them out-of-the-box, as we won’t ship the driver anymore. The customer will probably have to download the driver package somewhere to get his card running.”

“For non-WPA modes nearly all chipsets as listed on the page linked above should work, with Ralink devices as exception. We also won’t ship the driver in 10.1. The list is missing PrismGT devices, which do work in case it’s a FullMAC one (typically the older models).”

Using this info, and a little research of my own, I pounded out this article at Novell CoolSolutions, which outlines how to set up a wireless network using SUSE Linux 10.0 machines as clients. Additionally, I outline how to secure the WLAN once installed.

Future articles about this will include ways to switch between your wireless networks at home, work, and school. Stay tuned for more info on that.

I will be at the CoolSolutions booth at Brainshare in Salt Lake City on Mon., Tue., and Wed. this week. Come by for some “blinkies” (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you were there last year) and/or a T-Shirt. Our theme for this year focuses on this survey that I’ve been working on since the beginning of the year.

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[Comments (11)] [link]

11 Responses to “Going Wireless in SUSE Linux 10.0”

Malke Routh Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 6:04 am
You are a godsend. I’ve got SuSE 9.3 on my desktop and Thinkpad X31 and yes, my first priority on the X31 is wireless. I’m off to read your CoolSolutions article now. Unfortunately, I see that the Atheros drivers are no longer being included in the distro. I took 10.0 off the X31 and returned to 9.3 because of this. Now I see that 10.1 will give me the same problem. Can you elaborate on the SuSE’s guy’s comment “The customer will probably have to download the driver package somewhere to get his card running”? Where would one get the drivers and am I the only one who thinks this sucks? Since I always pay for my SuSE’s (developers have to eat), I can’t help but feel the drivers should be included.

Great blog, thanks for all your efforts.
scottmmorris Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 8:07 am
Malke,
Thanks.
It appears that they are removing some of the wireless NIC drivers. I am not sure as to the reason for this. I’ll have to ask for you. He’s just saying that you may have to go to one of the common drivers sites, like http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/news.html or http://www.linux-wlan.org/ to grab your drivers instead of just getting them with your system. I do feel the same way you do about having them included.
Thanks for your comments. Have a good one.
Luke Parry Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Suse 10.0 has been a really annoying for wireless networks. Where I have got a laptop and to get acpi working that would allow me to use ndiswrapper, maybe soon the new broadcom drivers was quite hard. Also problems arose when the kernel uprgraded and I had to re install suse again. Also not selecting allow user control in YAST , means you won;t be able to connect at all using it, but isn’t always made default. In the end I got it working, but with mandriva 2006, i used ndiswrapper and within 3 three minutes, approx. I have a working wireless network. It took me a lot longer with suse, but hopin g to go back with suse 10.1
Gerry Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 12:53 pm
I am a bit underwhelmed by this article. OK it’s strong on setting up a netgear router but it’s seriously weak on setting up a laptop computer – consisting largely of “take your working Wifi driver and then configure it.

And what if your wifi card isn’t detected?

Better resources out there than this including http://www.linux-laptops.com
Gerry Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 12:56 pm
sorry that’s http://www.linux-on-laptops.com
scottmmorris Says:
March 21st, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Gerry,
It was aimed at “this is a great card to use with SUSE 10.0″, and how to do a little research if you didn’t want to use Netgear. Hopefully, I demonstrated that adequately. Also, it was an intro to wireless. The next one will be a little more advanced, geared towards moving between wireless networks.
Thanks for taking a sec to post your comments.
Kevin Says:
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:54 am
Do you have any suggestions for people who travel from place to place and use their laptop on multiple secure networks? (like most business people) So far I have to maintain a list of WEP codes and paste them in the Kinternet dialog box when I choose a new connection. Any new and automated ideas would be appreciated.
scottmmorris Says:
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Kevin,
That is the exact topic I’m going to try and tackle in my next “wireless” article for SUSE Linux 10.0. Stay tuned.
David Corking Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 6:37 am
Great article, Scott. I particularly appreciated the link to the new HCL Wiki, as I was not ware of it, and I had found the HCL on Novell’s site really only caters to the SLES products now.

http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_Adapters_(Wireless)

I am a big fan of what seems to be the authorative Linux Wireless page : Jean Tourrilhes Linux Wireless HOWTO

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Wireless.html

Unfortunately for selecting cards, this is not much use on its own, as it only relates to chipsets, and is fairly technical. However it is great for examining which chipset vendors are serious about supporting Linux with 802.11g (very few vendors, sadly – Atheros, Intel and Zydas are about the full list.)

It might be useful to link to Jean’s HOWTO in your future article

For those who have been stuck with an unsupported card, the ndiswrapper package (included with SuSE) allows you to borrow the Windows binary driver supplied by the vendor. I got a TI ACX111 card ‘free’ with my router, and discovered it worked quite well (with WEP not WPA) even under SuSE 8.2 with ndiswrapper.

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Linux.Wireless.drivers.other.html#Win32

David
scottmmorris Says:
March 24th, 2006 at 10:19 am
David,

Thanks!

Thank you for the link to Jean Tourrilhes’ page, as well. That is, indeed, a great resource. I’ve put the link into the article.Â Let me know if you’d like me to credit you by name in the article for suggesting that link.Â Thanks again.
Alberto Says:
April 15th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Ralink drivers are included and perfectly working on SuSE 10.0. But SuSE decided to drop them in 10.1 telling they’re not stable enough.
Actually I don’t understand. They work good on Fedora Core 5, I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t under SuSE.

Honestly these kind of decisions are very annoying. A serious software maker can’t drop hardware support without a good reason just telling “the kernel is changed, and the new driver is unstable”. I hope Novell will reconsider this choice, but probably it won’t.

There always is ndiswrapper, but it’s not the final solution at all.