Connecting to wifi network on Motorola MC3100

While attempting to connect a Motorola MC3100 to my wifi network, I was getting a popup message saying that I might not be able to connect due to regulatory issues. Looking into the logs, I found the following message.

"Country code not acquired yet"

I guessed some sort of country code has to be sent my the wifi access point for the device to work. So, I looked into hostapd configuration manual and found that in the 'IEEE 802.11 related configuration' section, we can set country codes. So, I changed the following variables:

country_code=<your country code>
ieee80211d=1

When I restarted the wifi hotspot, the device could connect to internet successfully.

Broadcom wireless on Arch linux

My wireless card is Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g. When Broadcom had not released open source drivers, I was using b43 drivers according to Archlinux wiki. These drivers worked fine till kernel version 2.6.37. From the next kernel version, it started trouble me as described in this bug. I switched to broadcom-wl and things worked fine once again. However, starting from kernel 3.0.x, each time I update my kernel, I have to recompile my drivers using

makepkg -f

and reinstall them using

pacman -U ./<package name>.xz

Now I can successfully connect to WPA networks; but not to WEP networks.

The Beauty of a Gentoo installation

I have installed various linux distributions so far but Gentoo installation has an unmatched beauty to it. It is special because you can stop the installation and resume it at will. You just need to chroot back in if you have not completed the base system installation. Once the base system is installed, you can keep adding features at your pace and suiting your internet speed.

Unlike other distributions, Gentoo offers very fine-grained control over the packages you install and what features those packages have enabled. This is done using USE flags.

If you are looking a graphical installer that does its job without asking you much, this is not for you; but if you want robust control with proper dependency checking and stability, Gentoo is the right choice for you.

While other distributions have trouble connecting to the internet from their install environments, Gentoo minimal install environment had Intel Wireless microcode (iwl3945-ucode) and I could connect to a WPA network and do the installation.

Support on #gentoo sets Gentoo apart from every other distribution. I have solved problems of other distributions on this channel. Every time you have an issue, you can find someone here to help you out.

The beauty of the installation process lies in the freedom and the host of options that it allows you.

Connecting to WPA networks

Wireless networks using WEP keys are not very secure. WPA keys should be preferred over WEP keys. To connect to a wireless network on linux, first store the passphrase in a configuration file with the following command:

wpa_passphrase "<your essid>" "<your passphrase>" > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Set up WPA handshaking using

wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -B -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

The option -Dwext specifies that generic linux wireless drivers should be used. The -B flag tells wpa_supplicant to work in the background. The -iwlan0 option specifies wlan0 as the interface for communication. Now set up dhcp client on wlan0 using

dhcpcd wlan0

Connecting to wireless LAN on Arch linux

Recently, I successfully accessed wireless LAN on my Arch linux. This post shall be a documentation of the same.
Following is the part of lspci -k output of interest here.

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company BCM4311 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller
        Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
        Kernel modules: ssb

To get the driver, I followed the steps in the wiki. I edited the MODULES line of my rc.conf as follows:

MODULES=(acpi-cpufreq cpufreq_ondemand cpufreq_conservative cpufreq_powersave cpufreq_performance !pcspkr !snd_pcsp !b43legacy b43)

Using wireless LAN was fairly simple with the following sequence of commands:

# wake up the interface
ifconfig wlan0 up
# scan for wireless networks in range
iwlist scan
# join the desired network based on their essid
iwconfig wlan0 essid "<name>" key <password>
# for automatic detection
iwconfig wlan0 channel auto
# obtain the lease of an IP
dhcpcd wlan0

It is also easy to end a wireless session.

# release the interface
dhcpcd -k wlan0
# exit dhcp
dhcpcd -x
# turn off the interface
ifconfig wlan0 down