CLI for wireless card

[Member mizpa]

antiX 17
Dell laptop
Need a command to find out if it has a wireless card, and which one so I can download the drivers.
Thanks

[Moderator caprea]

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inxi -zv8

should give enough information about the network-devices

[Member mizpa]

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Thank you caprea

[Member utu]

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Hello, mizpa.

IMHO, inxi is a bit of overkill if you know that some Dell Inspiron laptops use Broadcom
wifis which work well with Broacom proprietary ‘STA mode’ firmware which is savailable
via Synaptic as broadcom-sta-dkms which builds and installs the wl driver. wl is
incompatible with the open source driver b43. The last time I tried b43, it was 32-bit
which would not keep up with broadband speeds. wl is 64-bit and works well with my
Inspiron 1545.

I use the following aliases to assess my Inspiron from time-to-time.
I added these to my .bashrc via .bash_aliases, but you can just use these as ad hoc
bash definitions which disappear at shut-down if you prefer.
Inxi may take a little time to weed out the following bits of pertinent stuff.

# Broadcom wifi-related:
alias wifi.card=’lspci -vnn | grep –color -A 4 Wireless’
alias wifi.firmware=’dmesg | grep –color Broadcom’ # Version 6.30.223.271 or later.
alias wifi.modules=’lsmod | grep –color wl’ # b43 may be 32-bit, not 64.
alias wifi.module=”lsmod | grep -v an0 | grep –color ‘wl\|b43′”

Hope this helps.
utu

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by utu.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by utu. Reason: check for b43 as well; de-clutter wifi.module result
• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by utu.

64-bit MX-18.2 using 4.20.12 Kernel LiveUSB on Dell Laptop

[Member mizpa]

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inxi -zv8 was not recognized as a command, so I went to help.
inxi -N gave me this:

Card 1: Broadcom Limited NetXtreme BCM751 Gigabit Ethernet PCIE  Driver:tg3
Card 2: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection  Driver: ipw2200 

It’s been many years since I’ve used either ceni or wpa, so since I’m working off a portable hotspot, I’d like an opinion as to which would be the best to use in this situation. BTW, I can’t get it to work at the Library either, so I wouldn’t think it would make any diff about the hotspot (but I have been wrong once or twice in my life – just ask my wife :>).
I will look on the internet to see if I can find a manual about using ceni or wpa to hook up to the internet with that laptop.

I just thought of another question …. If I have a wireless card in the laptop, what might be preventing it from “seeing” the hotspot, which is about a foot away and works fine with other laptops? Is there an internal software setting that I need to locate – there’s no switch on the outside that needs to be set like the later laptops had.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by mizpa. Reason: additional question

[Forum Admin BitJam]

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The inxi output says your wireless card/chip uses the ipw2200 driver which is already on the system.

You can see if it is already loaded with “lsmod | grep ipw2200”.

I use Ceni in the command line to connect wireless. It is very easy. Have you tried it?

Context is worth 80 IQ points -- Alan Kay

[Member mizpa]

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BitJam wrote:

The inxi output says your wireless card/chip uses the ipw2200 driver which is already on the system.

You can see if it is already loaded with “lsmod | grep ipw2200”.

I use Ceni in the command line to connect wireless. It is very easy. Have you tried it?

I used (and wrote down) the command above and shows this:

ipw2200                 125884 0
libipw                   22604 1 ipw2200
cfg80211                422317 3 wl,ipw2200,libipw

The only instructions for CENI that I found on the internet were for Siduction, Aptosid, and MX Linux. I took a look at the MX instructions because of the relationship between antiX and MX, but with the hotspot, I don’t have all the information – I’ll have to make some phone calls to where I rented it to get that info anyways for the CLI, so if you can give me a link to a CLI instructions page on the web, it will help me with the CLI commands to get me hooked up.
Thanks,
Bierhundt

NOTE: I just went (again) to the menu>Applications>Internet>Ceni which took me to a terminal which, when I selected the Intel wireless it told me it was already configured. If that’s the CLI you’re talking about, and if it’s already configured, what might be stopping it from ‘seeing’ the wireless hotspot (other than my lack of Linux CLI knowledge)?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by mizpa.

[Forum Admin BitJam]

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Use the command “sudo ceni”. Choose your wireless adapter. It is probably the only choice. It should start with wlan0: or something like that. Choose to scan. Select the network you want to connect to. Enter the password. Tab to the “Accept” button and accept. Accept again. When it is connected do as they say and press to continue. Select “yes” to exit the program.

It sounds complicated written out like this but it is very easy. The two tricks are:

1) select “wlan” for wireless
2) use to get to the Accept button after entering your password.

Context is worth 80 IQ points -- Alan Kay

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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The antiX FAQ has some pictures for ceni that should help

ceni

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member mizpa]

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Everything went as you said, except the wlan0 which was eth1 …. I’ve gone thru it twice and I still can’t get on. Since it’s not ethernet (which, I think, implies that it’s wired, is there a way to change the name to wlan0? It did recognize the hotspot.
just went thru it a 3rd time.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by mizpa.

[Member mizpa]

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From the FAQ:
“antiX also ships with wicd on antiX-full and antiX-base. Default boot from live media has wicd DISABLED! If you prefer it over ceni, then you MUST enable it at the live boot menu by pressing F4 > wicd.

Wicd is probably the better choice if you use wireless on the go on a laptop eg from various cafes, hotels etc.”

Would this be any better, since ceni doesn’t want to co-operate?

[Moderator caprea]

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wicd is installed , you can try it . It is in
control-center~~~network~~~wicd

[Forum Admin BitJam]

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Sure, try wicd but I think it is probably a firmware problem. That chip requires non-free firmware which we do supply in the firmware-ipw2x00 package. If that package is not installed on your system then that is the problem. If that package is already installed then please post the output of “inxi -Fz” in code tags (backticks I think). I would then Google around and see if someone else had the same problem on that machine and see if they have a fix. If there is a fix, my guess is it would be updated firmware.

Context is worth 80 IQ points -- Alan Kay

[Member mizpa]

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You realize I have to type it from one lappy to the other to copy and paste (LOL) this will take some time ……..

$ inxi -Fz
System:    Host: antix1 Kernel: 4.10.5-=antix.1-486-smp i686 bits:32
           Desktop IceWM 1.4.2 Distro: qntiX-17_386-base Heather Heyer 24 October 2017
Machine:   Device: portable System: Dell product: Latitude D610 serial: N/A
           Mobo: Dell model: OM7181 serial: N/A BIOS: Dell v: A06 date: 10/02/2005
Battery    BATO: charge: 1.0 Wh 5.5% condition: 18.9/53.3 Wh (36%)
CPU:       Single core Intel Pentium M (-UP-) cache:2048 KB speed: 1733MHz (max)
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV370/M22 [Mobility Radeon X300]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.19.2
           drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded:modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1400x1050@60.0.02hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV370 version: 2.1 Mesa 13.0.6
Audio:     Card Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW//FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller
           driver: snd_intel8x0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.10.5-antix.1-486-smp
Network:   Card-1: Broadcom Limited NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCIE driver: tg3
           IF"eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection
           driver: ipw2200
           IF: eth1 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 60.0GB (9.1% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: Hitachi_HTS54106 size: 60.0GB
Partition: ID-1 / size: 31G used 4.6G (17%) fs: ext$ dev: /dev/sda4
           ID-2 swap-1 size: 0.52GB used: 0.00GB (0%) dev: /dev/sd4
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 41.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds: (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 123 Uptime: 17 min Memory: 97.8/2016.8MB
           Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.54

As I said, that took some time …. I just hope it was worth it to tell you what might be the problem with it, since each time I tried to configure it, a dialog box came up and it said,
The selected network interface, eth1, is already configured. Would you like to configure, remove or cancel setup of eth1? Naturally, I chose to reconfigure, as you directed.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by mizpa.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by mizpa.

[Forum Admin BitJam]

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mizpa wrote:

You realize I have to type it from one lappy to the other to copy and paste (LOL) this will take some time

I had no idea. I would have copied it to an usb stick or something. I’m very sorry about that.

I’m working on an emergency now. Maybe someone else can help you with this. As I indicated before, the first step is to Google(Latitude D610).

Context is worth 80 IQ points -- Alan Kay

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