Network Settings 101

[grog]

Hi all. I'm trying to climb out of newbiedom, but there's a lot I stil don't understand. I tried to do some wardriving thing using wellenreiter, but could never connect with anything. Then when I got back home I couldn't connect with my home access point anymore.

I finally managed to  get back on @home, but it seems that the problem was that I had transferred my home network settings to the wifi0 section of the network settings & that didn't work. I did that 'cause I noticed that wellenreiter wanted to overwrite those settings when I was playing around wardriving. As soon as I moved them back to wlan0, POP! I was back on.

So my first question is; what the heck is the difference between the wifi0 & wlan0 settings? Which one should I be using? And how can I set up another one & call it 'home'? When I select Add the only option I get is PPP & it takes me to dialup settings.

thanks in advance

[hatchetman]

I don't see any wifi0 interface on my OZ installation, I guess that must be something in wellenreiter? I use wlan0 on my SL-6000, not sure how it works with other units and wireless cards.

As for using the Zaurus for war driving, I think if it couldn't connect to a hub it might go into a sleep mode to save power. Can you listen to the wireless interface even if there is no signal? I know when I had Sharp ROM installed, and when I would get a weak signal, it would disconnect and turn off the wireless card.

So use wlan0, and try to find some success stories online about wardriving, must be some documents out there.

[grog]

I don't see any wifi0 interface on my OZ installation, I guess that must be something in wellenreiter? I use wlan0 on my SL-6000, not sure how it works with other units and wireless cards.

I know both interfaces were there before wellenreiter, but I can't say for sure they were there when I first installed OZ. I'm thinking they were, though.

As for using the Zaurus for war driving, I think if it couldn't connect to a hub it might go into a sleep mode to save power. Can you listen to the wireless interface even if there is no signal? I know when I had Sharp ROM installed, and when I would get a weak signal, it would disconnect and turn off the wireless card.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'listening to the interface', but the light the card doesn't go off at any time.

So use wlan0, and try to find some success stories online about wardriving, must be some documents out there.

I'll do some searching. Thanks for the reply.

[CoreDump]

wifi0 appeared w/ OZ 3.5.1 as a resultof upgrading the hostap driver.
As for details of what it does, read the FAQ at the hostap homepage.

As a general rule of thumb, it can be completely ignored. Just pretend it isn't there and don't
mess with any settings for wifi0.

[grog]

As a general rule of thumb, it can be completely ignored. Just pretend it isn't there and don't
mess with any settings for wifi0.

AH! That's good to know. For everybody else, here's the entry off of the hostap's FAQ:

6. Why did I get two network interfaces (wlan0 and wifi0) even when I have
   only one wireless card?

Host AP driver supports multiple virtual interfaces per wireless
card. wifi0 is the master radio interface and wlan0 is the first
virtual interface for this radio. Other virtual interfaces are wlan0ap
(for hostapd), and one interface per WDS link.

In most cases, one should ignore wifi0 interface and just use wlan0
interface. In other words, assign IP address to wlan0, not wifi0 and
in general, just ignore the wifi0 interface.

Now since I've 'messed' with the settings, can you tell me waht the defaults are so I can restore it? It doesn't mentiona that in the FAQ.

And is there a way I can setup a second interface setup so I can save my home settings separately?

thanks

[CoreDump]

The fastest way would be to edit /etc/network/interfaces and removing the configuration of wif0 manually.

[grog]

Now since I've 'messed' with the settings, can you tell me what the defaults are so I can restore it? It doesn't mentiona that in the FAQ.

The fastest way would be to edit /etc/network/interfaces and removing the configuration of wif0 manually.

I'm assuming this is what you were answering? If so, then I backed up my interfaces file, removed the wifi section, started network settings and wifi0 was still there, different settings than what I remember putting in, but it didn't reappear in the file. So I rebooted, same. So I guess it's not hurting not having it in the file, since we're not using it anyway, right? Curious where it's getting it's setting from, but hey, what me worry? :?)

I'm going to play around too see if I can get a working wlan1 (or whatever I call it). thanks