Mandrake 9.1 and Wireless Networking

[Jason Kumpf]

Recently I finally got a wireless card for my laptop (Dell Inspiron
8200). I got the card through work so it they got it from Dell
(TrueMobile 1150 Series Wireless Mini PCI Card). As soon as I booted
up, without changing anything, mandrake had recognized it, installed
what it needed and then connected automatically to the nearest
wireless access point. YIKES!! That access point is not even in our
office, it might be some local college hacker!

So next I figures I would go to my
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 file and change onboot=no.
Well this didn't seem to work as when I boot up we still automatically
connect to the nearest wireless access point.

Now I guess I have a few questions but the only one I really care to
have answered is:

1. How do I stop my wireless card from automatically connecting to any
access point?

2. Is there a way to setup or a startup script that will only try to
startup my wireless card if no hard wire connection (eth0) is found?

3. Is there a way to profile my network settings so that I can say hey
only start eth0 if it's present else look for these two access points
(work or home) and then try to connect with these WEP keys?

I am sure there are answers and solutions to these questions I have
asked but I have just been having a tough time finding them. Maybe I
am just bad at searching google groups but I really don't know why
this scenario is so difficult to achieve on Linux and so easy to do on
Windows XP. I hate to admit that though it seems to be true at least
for me.

[dave Stanton]

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:20:45 -0700, Jason Kumpf wrote:

> Recently I finally got a wireless card for my laptop (Dell Inspiron 8200).
> I got the card through work so it they got it from Dell (TrueMobile 1150
> Series Wireless Mini PCI Card). As soon as I booted up, without changing
> anything, mandrake had recognized it, installed what it needed and then
> connected automatically to the nearest wireless access point. YIKES!!
> That access point is not even in our office, it might be some local
> college hacker!

Do you know what chipset that card uses, if not, what module is loaded for
it ?.

Cheers

Dave

--
And you were born knowing all about ms windows....??

[horne]

Jason Kumpf scribbled:

> Recently I finally got a wireless card for my laptop (Dell Inspiron
> 8200). I got the card through work so it they got it from Dell
> (TrueMobile 1150 Series Wireless Mini PCI Card). As soon as I booted
> up, without changing anything, mandrake had recognized it, installed
> what it needed and then connected automatically to the nearest
> wireless access point. YIKES!! That access point is not even in our
> office, it might be some local college hacker!

If you are using the KDE desktop, the control panel should provide a GUI
interface to configure the WiFi interface - you can disable it by default
here and enable the CAT5 interface. The WAP must have a unique name, as
the factory default is common to all WAPs from that manufacturer, hence the
reason you probably connected to the non-corporate WAP by default. As for
security WEP is pretty weak so if you really need secure communications
link use SSH on both ends of the link, or at least up to the link between
the WAP and the device connected to your corporate infrastructure via CAT5
cable.

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