For Dell Latitude CPi laptop PC with ZyDAS 802.11b/g USB2 WiFi attachment
Online documentation for this model of Dell can be found at:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pmojav/
Driver for the ZyDAS will show up under lsmod as 'zd1211...'
Boot up with Mepis bootable CD
Tip: most of the following for Mepis will run faster
for the wireless if any wired ethernet card is removed,
so as not to confuse the configuation software into
always trying to configure the wired connection first,
before moving along to the wireless connection.Right click on the mouse over black GUI desktop area, and a menu will show up.
Select to start a Terminal session.
At the prompt there enter:
iwlist wlan0 scan
This will list information about avalailable wireless Access Points (AP) (networks).
Pick the one you want to use from the 'ESSID: <AP>' part of the listing.
Typical values will be:
2WIRE546 - for Boulder St. / fully functional.
ethostream - for LAPL / fully functional, may need to restart browser
after the captive portal / Terms acceptance page,
may seem to choke, but did register in actuallity.SFVLUG - for San Fernando Valley LUG meetings. / tested with pings
didn't get further due to many circumstances.
You may skip up to this point if you already know the AP.
Repeat the Right Click on blank desktop space, and pick the menus 'AdminTools' / 'Mepis Admin' / 'Network'.
Enter the root password when prompted.
Most settings will have correct defaults set, but change these. For each tab on the mnetwork GUI, 'apply':
Tab Select and apply
Interfaces 'wlan0' and 'start/restart on Apply'
Wireless 'SSID' and enter the SSID selected above
General 'NDISwrapper' disabled and (re)start the network
You may need to wait a bit as each selection is applied.
You should now be wirelessly networked when the network finishes restarting. You should see a message in the mnetwork window about lease renewal time. There may be a message about some subprocess crashing, but it seems to be irrelevant. If you see a message about the network process going to sleep, it failed to connect, cycle through the mnetwork tabs making sure the settings are correct and restart the the network in the General tab.
WV3 (TKL based) browser seemed to be the only one of several that had functional SSL. Firefox only tested briefly at this point, seemed to take a long time to start and end, need more testing.
For Puppy Linux 2.15:
boot, at the boot prompt I suggest entering:
puppy pfix=ram acpi=off<return>
The boot may seem to stall at some points, taking a long time at some points in the process but this seems to be normal.
When prompted for a keyboard configuration, pick the first, "US Keyboard".
When quiried about X software, I found I could use the VESA, and then pick 1024X768X16 when given a choice. The display may be bleary when that choice is presented, but will clear up almost immediately when displayed for testing, and then select to continue with it.
When boot is complete click on the 'connect' icon.
This will give a choice of dialup or network interface, pick network interface.
The next choice will be pick a network driver, so select it.
A menu of drivers will come up, pick the last one, 'zd1211rw'
The menu will return with more choices, and select 'interfaces', 'eth0'.
Select wireless and then autoconnect.
Add in a name for the connection and set the the ESSID, for the LAPL library, typically 'ethostream' and click to use this configuration.
You will return menu with still more choices, and it is a good point to select 'test eth0', and after that completes successfully, simply select 'autoDHCP' to get an address assigned/lease.
Should be ready to use the net at this point.
8 April 2008 addenda:
using the AirLink 101 802.11g Wireless USB adapter (brand new), found that it seemed to get confused and didn't connect properly if in the wireless configuration panel you try ~'autoconfig/autoconnect'. Instead choose the 'scan' button and pick one of the choices for wireless networks, no encryption is a good choice for Boulder location. It seemed to work just the same as others with the Dell Latitude.
Note: Airlink has a website at http://www.AirLink101.com
Damn Small Linux didn't seem to have the driver for the ZyDAS ready for use.
For GRML (A Debian commandline oriented Live CD, http://www.grml.org)
On bootup, when at the point to set boot parameters, hit F2 (for example), and enter:
grml zd1211rw noapic nolapic acpi=off noprompt noeject nofstab blacklist=fan,thermal
and hit return. (I may be do doing a 'remaster-lite' of the CD to reduce this) The 'zd1211rw' is to load the AirLink driver.
There are some curses based menus that present some options for configuring networking and other things. One good thing about these menus is that they present the command (in many, perhaps all cases these are shell scripts) each menu option runs, so if you remember what the command for the option is you can can later run the command direct from the command prompt if you want to. At some future date, we may expand on using these programs that may be chosen from the menus to handle wireless networking configuration.
Skipping past the menus, direct from the command prompt, you can run:
#iwconfig eth0 key s:<KEY> #iwconfig eth0 essid <ESSID> #dhcp
and after dhcp finishes running you should be connected to the wireless network. (Thanks to Charles W. for helping with this.)
Thumb Rule: It has been found that sometimes, if you have trouble connecting, it may help to elevate the AirLink wireless device.