On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 05:18:23PM +0100, Brett Parker wrote:
On 26 Aug 14:27, Chris G wrote:
Yet again I am totally confused trying to get a WiFi connection to work. The real problem is that I don't really understand what the Network panel applet is supposed to do for me. Is there any good HowTo or similar for this applet?
It's a front end to Network Manager, which is the "shiny new" way of configuring interfaces... (I hates it and loves ifupdown, but never mind...).
Yes, many people moan about Network Manager.
The first question is what's it called? In order to try and find out anything about it by a Google search for example I need to know what I'm looking for. Ah, it does have an "About" entry, it's the NetworkManager applet, version 0.8. (Running on Xubuntu 10.04)
Firstly what's *supposed* to happen when/if there's a wireless network available? Do I need to do anything or should something appear in the applet?
*If* you have the right permissions, then it should pop up a box and say "look, there be a wireless network"! Not sure what the right perms are though, and I don't generally run it... :)
If nothing appears and I know (hope?) there's a network about can I do anything to make things happen?
Well, you could check that you're not being insane by going to a terminal and doing:
/sbin/iwlist <nameofwirelessinterface> scanand see if that brings anything back... if it says that the interface wasn't available or some other such, then you might need to ifconfig the interface up first.
So what's <nameofwirelessinterface>? This is often much of the problem with WiFi, these 'things' that if you know what they are are obvious but if you don't are inscrutable.
I know the hard-wired network is almost inevitably on eth0 but there doesn't really seem to be such a consistent name for the WiFi.
Running ifconfig on this laptop just shows me eth0, eth1 and lo, but the little WiFi light above the keyboard is turned on.