Hi I setup wireless assistant on my laptop and I think it is working ok. I am an extreme newbie to linux. well started at the beginning of the year wih ubuntu. Anyway I bought a pcmcia wireless card and I think I have eveyrthing I need according to what I have read on some how to pages but they don't go into enough detail about how it all works. I am new to wifi and I don't understand when the program searches for a connection(i am doing this to connect to public connections) it makes a list of possibles but I am not sure what is ok to connetc to and what is not. I noticed that there are icons that have a closed lock. Does this mean that that connection is closed so I can't use it? I understand about the star rating that I see but not what I am mentioning about. I tried all 3 of the connections that are listed and it asks for an ESSID and WEP. I have screenshots of what is happening if I am not describing things properly as I am used to windoze and am a newbie to wireless or any kind of networking structure. Would appreciate some advice as anything I am reading on the net is way over my head.

"The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

I do not use wireless here, but I will try to help.

The connections with the closed locks are secured networks. You will be unable to use them without their security key (works something like data encryption).

WEP is a wireless security protocol. It is defined as Wired Equivalent Privacy at Wikipedia.

ESSID is defined as Service Set Identifier

Wikipedia is an excellent multi-lingual encyclopedia resource. You can use it to learn about many of the terms you will encounter in your Linux adventure. :).

HTH,

Ernie Registered Linux User 247790
ICQ 41060744

I Googled for ESSID and found this link at the Personal Telco Project WEB site. I have not explored the site yet, but it appears to have more useful information as well.

HTH,

Ernie Registered Linux User 247790
ICQ 41060744

MMMmmmmm ok well I am learning a bit more. The wiki links I have visited before and is over my head but I guess I will get there one day.
Ernie that Telco thing is for America I guess and I am in Australia but i get the idea. I know we have hotspots here somewhere and I will go and seek them out tomorrow as I visited the big park across from where I lived and there were only closed connections there today. Thanks!!!

"The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

Some communities (towns) provide a public
wireless network. It is possible this could
be true where you live. I do not know how
your municipal government is structured, but
I would think you have a local
representative in the government who may be
able to tell you if this is true, or if
there are any local public hot spots.

My town has a local Chamber of Commerce
office. This is a business organization with
the objective of promoting member
businesses. If there are any public local
WIFI hot spots supported by local companies,
they may know about them.

HTH,

Ernie Registered Linux User 247790
ICQ 41060744

OK well I went to a major shopping mall today and there were several connections there. One a friend said he happily surfed there just outside near an Apple resller shop. I saw a connection but from what I can figure I need to be signed in as root to use wlassistant which searches for all nearby networks. It shows me the closed connections and when I click on the open ones it says I need to use sudo or something like that so I opened a terminal and this is what I got:
carolyni@carolyni-laptop:~$ sudo wlassistant
Password:
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
Major opcode: 145
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
Major opcode: 145
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
Creating link /root/.kde/socket-carolyni-laptop.
Created link from "/root/.kde/socket-carolyni-laptop" to "/tmp/ksocket-root"
/usr/bin/iceauth: creating new authority file /root/.ICEauthority
Creating link /root/.kde/tmp-carolyni-laptop.
Created link from "/root/.kde/tmp-carolyni-laptop" to "/tmp/kde-root"
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
Major opcode: 145
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 168
Major opcode: 145
Minor opcode: 3
Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
Session management error: Authentication Rejected, reason : None of the authentication protocols specified are supported and host-based authentication failed
kbuildsycoca running...
Creating link /root/.kde/cache-carolyni-laptop.
Created link from "/root/.kde/cache-carolyni-laptop" to "/var/tmp/kdecache-root"
kio (KService*): WARNING: The desktop entry file /usr/share/applications/DefaultPlugins.desktop has Type=Link instead of "Application" or "Service"
kio (KService*): WARNING: Invalid Service : /usr/share/applications/DefaultPlugins.desktop
kio (KSycoca): ERROR: No database available!
Loaded application options.
DHCP Client: dhclient
All executables found.
iwconfig_status: /sbin/iwconfig
==>stderr: lo no wireless extensions.

wifi0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

Wireless interface(s): ath0
Permissions checked.
ifconfig_status: /sbin/ifconfig ath0
scan: /sbin/iwlist ath0 scan
No networks found!

Oh by the way I did the above while at home and I know there are no available networks here.

"The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

As I said in my first response, I do not use
WIFI. I also do not use Ubuntu, but they do
have an excellent community. There is a set
of Ubuntu Forums where you may get better help.

Ernie Registered Linux User 247790
ICQ 41060744

Thanks Ernie but I tried that! No one is really helping me there. I read so many "how to" thingys as well but I had a Linux friend get online today and he gave me some clues as to how I have to do it. So I will test out what he says tomorrow and post a solution if it happens then so others can learn by the same thing.

"The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

Super! That is how these forums really work
to help others. I'll be watching. Sorry I
can not be of greater help.

Ernie Registered Linux User 247790
ICQ 41060744

Well I tried something else. I got another laptop which is faster. Still old but within Ubuntu's requirements. Anyway I took the hard drive from the older machine because the hd's were the same size anyway. Plus everything was working. Like gnome-ppp and wireless assistant . I sorted out that I need to be logged in as root to use the wifi card or change permissions so I can use it as user. Well a friend confirmed this. For some reason when I go to use gnome-ppp the system freezes on the newer machine but everything else works fine. Well I do suspect that one pcmcia slot is not working but the one that the card is in seems to be working. I am just not sure but system>device manager sees both cards(wifi and 56k modem card) when put into the upper pcmcia slot but gets an error of funny letters when anything is put into the lower slot. I thought of cleaning the pins deep inside but I am not sure how to go about it. Anyway hope someone can help so I can get off windoze.....ha ha.

"The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

Well good news the wifi thing is working. All I had to do is open a terminal and type sudo wlassistant. The GUI came up as well which meant I just had to chose which connection I wanted according to the star rating and wammo I was surfing and getting updates. The first thing synaptic did is update wlassistant. Then I uninstalled gnome-ppp but unfortunately that didn't fix it. I may have to purge or something then go back to the bar when I got the wifi connection to reinstall gnome-ppp from scratch. I found a bar or pub as we say in Australia where there is free wifi so if there are any other sydney siders out there. Pubnet at the thepointhotel.com is great.

"The meaning of life is to be happy and useful" Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama