Debian 5.0 Linux "Lenny" Wireless on Toshiba E105-S1802 cheatsheet
Ok so you bought the Toshiba E105 and using the stock Lenny you cannot
detect the wireless card, welcome to the club.
Do an "lspci" (apt-get install lspci if you don't have it) and you should
see a Network Controller show up as Atheros Communications Inc. Device
002a. The device is the key piece of information here an "lshw -C" should
reveal a bit more and "lspci -nn" will reveal even more but the bottom line
is this beast is an Atheros ar928x controller.
I googled the world and the Ubuntu pages are probably the best but I would
not bother again since the 2.6.26 kernel that comes stock is not worth it
and the driver you actually need is the ath9k that was in mainline 2.6.27
and that will not be in your stock out-of-the-box Lenny.
So head over to here: Debian ath9k and follow the easy instructions to
backport/upgrade your kernel.
Most of the documentation after the backport is useless such as number 8
"Configure". I found NetworkManager for both gnome and KDE unusable for
the problems I encountered mainly getting the Atheros card to see my Netgear
WAP.
I ended up using KWiFiManager under KDE
(Internet->More Applications->KWiFiManager) which is probably Network
Manager under the sheets but it is far from obvious.
Once you get your new kernel 2.6.30 to boot you should be able to do an
"iwconfig" and see a wlan0 device yippee!! Next you probably want to do an
"iwlist scan" and you should see your wireless access device router or WAP.
In the scan list you should see a line that looks like this ESSID:"NAME"
where "NAME" is probably the brand name of the device like NETGEAR or
LINKSYS or whatever --you might want write this down and case matters.
Now go to KWiFiManager noted above, if you are lucky you will see the
signal indicator green in color, if not green, hit the scan for networks button
and you should see some networks, once you find your router or WAP you
can double click in the mode block (where is says Managed or Master) and
you will see the Switch to Network button light up, make sure your device
is highlighted and switch to it.
If you still get nothing go to settings Configuration Editor (need root)
In my case the Network name was the same as the ESSID noted above, the
interface should be something like wlan0 or ath0 and the operation mode
I used was managed and speed was auto --that's WWFM.
Once you get a green signal if you use dhcp on your network you should
be able to do a "udhcpc" and dhcp should configure your station. If you
don't use dhcp you should be able to configure wlan0 with "ifconfig".
Ok, so we are almost done, of course we want this all to work auto-
magically. So with your favorite editor open /etc/network/interfaces.
You should see lines led by the word iface that look like this:
iface lo inet loopback
In my case I had to add an entry that looked like this:
#wireless
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid NETGEAR
The auto line does this automatically at boot time, the
interface line tells it to use dhcp, and the ESSID is
the same one mention above. Give your box a reboot you're done.
The notes here will work for a pretty vanilla setup and get you
started. If you need more basic information I strongly recommend:
Debian WiFi wiki
Debian WiFi HowToUse
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