Trouble with Micro$oft MN-520 Wireless & Suse (Can anyone Help?)

Hey all;

Well, the newsgroups are my last resort...if anyone can help?

I am running Suse 9.2 on an IBM Thinkpad 600. Trying to properly configure a
Microsoft MN-520 Wireless PCMCIA card to work, but to no avail. (it seems
that ZERO distros offer built in hardware support for it.)

I have some experience w/ Mandrake, but consider me a noobie for
explanations' sake.

Thanks in advance.
Jason

Did you try google as your first resort? Some of the leads look
promising. For example:

http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pi...ay/011448.html
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Mi...gle.com&rnum=4

The above two links seem to arrive at the same conclusion, and it
appears to be an easy fix.

If this doesn't pan out (or "been there, done that. didn't work") it
would help to know what chipset the card uses and what the system has to
say about it (dmesg, log files, etc.). It would also help to know what
you have already tried (you mentioned you have been trying to configure
it) and what the results were.

Do you get zero, one, or two beeps when you insert it into the pcmcia
slot? Any indicator lights on or off on the card itself after insertion?

Try running the following command with the card inserted (as root) in a
terminal window:

# tail -f /var/log/messages

.... now remove the card and watch the output in the terminal.

.... now insert the card and watch the output in the terminal.

What is the output in both cases?

This will tell you what the system says about the card and will provide
important clues, but check out those links first if you haven't already.

HTH

Jeff


Jason Evangelho wrote:
> Hey all;
>
> Well, the newsgroups are my last resort...if anyone can help?
>
> I am running Suse 9.2 on an IBM Thinkpad 600. Trying to properly configure a
> Microsoft MN-520 Wireless PCMCIA card to work, but to no avail. (it seems
> that ZERO distros offer built in hardware support for it.)
>
> I have some experience w/ Mandrake, but consider me a noobie for
> explanations' sake.
>
> Thanks in advance.
> Jason
>
>

I have googled for hours :-)
It is an easy fix in RH and Manrake, but SUSE has a pcmcia/config.opts file
which seems to be laid out much differently, and those suggestions don't
work for SUSE. However, I'll try your suggestions and post back. Thanks for
the input :-)
Jason

> Did you try google as your first resort? Some of the leads look
> promising. For example:
>
>
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pi...ay/011448.html
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Mi...gle.com&rnum=4
>
> The above two links seem to arrive at the same conclusion, and it
> appears to be an easy fix.
>

Jeff;
After tinkering until about 4:30 in the morning, I finally got "iwconfig" to
recognize wireless card...But the wireless light is now blinking steadily,
and "iwconfig" does not mention an ESSID or a channel #. Is there a tool to
set these up?

Also, my MN-500 router DETECTS my laptop as a client (which is great news.)
Now I just need to point it to the network somehow. . .

One further thing: the card is configured as "wlan0" and not "eth0." Is that
acceptable? I tried doing "iwconfig wlan0 esside "MSHOME" but received error
messages. (I apologize for the lack of details...not in front of the laptop
right now.)

Thanks for you help again. It's much appreciated...
Jason

> Jason Evangelho wrote:
> > Hey all;
> >
> > Well, the newsgroups are my last resort...if anyone can help?
> >
> > I am running Suse 9.2 on an IBM Thinkpad 600. Trying to properly
configure a
> > Microsoft MN-520 Wireless PCMCIA card to work, but to no avail. (it
seems
> > that ZERO distros offer built in hardware support for it.)
> >
> > I have some experience w/ Mandrake, but consider me a noobie for
> > explanations' sake.
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> > Jason
> >
> >
>

Jason Evangelho wrote:
> Jeff;
> After tinkering until about 4:30 in the morning, I finally got "iwconfig" to
> recognize wireless card...But the wireless light is now blinking steadily,
> and "iwconfig" does not mention an ESSID or a channel #. Is there a tool to
> set these up?

You can use iwconfig to set the essid and the channel, but there's
probably a gui tool (I primarily use RedHat, in which case 'neat' is a
gui tool you could use, not sure with Suse) that would make life easier.

If you don't have a gui tool edit the config script (which should be in
the /etc directory somewhere). Not sure exactly where, as this varies by
distro. Use grep to find it:

# grep -R "wlan0" /etc

It's likely called "iwconfig-wlan0" or something close. You can set the
values there.


>
> Also, my MN-500 router DETECTS my laptop as a client (which is great news.)
> Now I just need to point it to the network somehow. . .
>
> One further thing: the card is configured as "wlan0" and not "eth0." Is that
> acceptable? I tried doing "iwconfig wlan0 esside "MSHOME" but received error
> messages. (I apologize for the lack of details...not in front of the laptop
> right now.)
>

"wlan0" is acceptable to the point of being correct. All network
settings can be set through the same mechanism (script, gui tool,
iwconfig on the command line, etc.) that you used to set the essid and
channel.

HTH

Jeff

> Thanks for you help again. It's much appreciated...
> Jason
>
>
>>Jason Evangelho wrote:
>>
>>>Hey all;
>>>
>>>Well, the newsgroups are my last resort...if anyone can help?
>>>
>>>I am running Suse 9.2 on an IBM Thinkpad 600. Trying to properly
>
> configure a
>
>>>Microsoft MN-520 Wireless PCMCIA card to work, but to no avail. (it
>
> seems
>
>>>that ZERO distros offer built in hardware support for it.)
>>>
>>>I have some experience w/ Mandrake, but consider me a noobie for
>>>explanations' sake.
>>>
>>>Thanks in advance.
>>>Jason
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>