[ltp] I shall try my laptop's wireless

[Andrew Barr]

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On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 03:04 +0800, Dan Jacobson wrote:
> New to wireless, I wish to try it out on my Thinkpad r50e, even though I
> am rural with nothing to connect to.=20

Um, well unless there is a neighbor or some such with an 802.11 signal
within several hundred meters than you likely have little use for this.

> Debian sid boot message shows all OK:
> ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, git-1.0.8

The telltale message is actually:

"ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection."

The driver always outputs the text you quoted but only outputs the line
above when the actual hardware is present. Recent driver versions also
tell you the geography code coded in the EEPROM.

> What to do next? I shall issue
> # iwconfig eth0 WHAT?

This would be used if you had a network to configure. It would be:

iwconfig eth0 essid foo

"foo" being your network name.

> and then the 1 and/or the A lights (meaning what?) will come on, yes or n=
o?

No, my ThinkPad R50e has a special antenna LED for the wireless. Most
versions of the ipw2200 driver are able to control the GPIO pins for
such LEDs. If the Num Lock (1) and Caps Lock (A) lights are blinking
that is usually indicative of a kernel panic.

> And my ham radio frequency counter will detect a signal, right?
> (OK, maybe not, as it is analog.)

I can't answer this question specifically as I've never had experience
with ham radio, but the radio on the hardware might give off some
signals if you try to scan for a network:

iwlist eth0 scan

> Then I will turn it back off with ifconfig eth0 WHAT?

To deactivate the radio on Intel cards, you have to do this:

echo 1 > /sys/class/net/eth0/device/rf_kill

> Maybe before I do, I shall scan to see if some other signals are
> present in my area with WHAT?

iwlist eth0 scan

>  And maybe display them or a spectrum with WHAT?

You can get a list of available networks with the above command.

Regards,
Andrew Barr

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