Actiontec Prism Wireless Card under SuSE 9.0 and 9.3
This page is now out of date and no longer maintained. I keep it here purely for reference purposes.
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I got my ACTIONTEC 11Mbps Wireless PC Card from a cheap ACTIONTEC router that decided to break a day after the warranty ran out. The router had come, as many cheap ones do, with a PCMCIA card to provide wireless access and after a great deal of wasted effort trying to get other wireless card to work with Linux I thought "what the hell, it might work". Until recently you could also buy this card, but I've noticed that recently its becoming scarce.
As it happens it worked almost straight out of the box with SuSE 9.0, and straight out of the box with 9.3, hence any Linux newbies should have little trouble following what I've got here. Please note I think that this guide could help you install any wireless card that uses the WLAN prism driver on SuSE 9.0.
I've also described how to operate with multiple wireless networks under SuSE 9.0. With 9.3 there is a pretty handy Yast based SCPM tool, invoke SCPM in the way described below, and after that the icons etc should appear in the KDE toolbar.
Hardware Details
Before we start I should mention that there are several different versions of the ACTIONTEC 11Mbps Wireless PC Card, and this guide only applies to versions using the Prism 2 or 3 chipset. My card's details are as follows:
- Name
- Actiontec 11Mbps Wireless PC Card
- Model
- 802C13 (or 802CI3, the font is a little ambiguous)
- FCC ID
- LNQ802C13
Driver setup with SuSE 9.0
To start with log in as root and listen to system messages.
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Then plug in the Actiontec wireless card, if the card is not detected you will get a short low sounding tone (if it is correctly detected, and some will be, the system messages will say so), and the message:
If you now open (as root, with your favourite text editor) the file /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.conf and look for the entry (or similar entry to):
All you need to do is change the number (in x's above) to match your card. Then re-boot the system (trying to restart PCMCIA services caused me some problems). Once your back in plug in the card whilst watching /var/log/messages, you should see the card picked up and get a merry little beep. If your in KDE you may get a window pop up asking if you want to configure the newly discovered card. Whether you get this message or not you will enter Yast, select "networking" and "configure network card". Yast will not detect the card, but insert a new card anyway, selecting all relevant wireless options, and select PCMCIA. Once done you should be logged on in no time!
How to use multiple networks - the simple way
Let us say you access 2 wireless networks regularly, one at home and one at work. Let us also say you have 2 PCMCIA slots. Then the easiest way to manage your networks is to have a configuration for each slot, meaning that if you plug your card in slot 0 you get your home network, and if you plug it in to slot 1 you get your work network.
This is painfully simple, go to your sysconfig network directory:
Next look for a file called "ifcfg-wlan-pcmcia" (note: you will only find this if you have used Yast to configure one of your networks), and rename it "ifcfg-wlan-pcmcia-0". Next make a copy called "ifcfg-wlan-pcmcia-1". These will be your two configuration files (guess which one corresponds to which slot!). Finally open each one with your favourite text editor and edit the variables for each of the networks you use (the variable names are pretty self explanatory).
How to use multiple networks - the complex way
If you need to access more than two networks, or would rather use a less rough and ready system then SuSE comes with the command line package scpm (package group "System/Base" if you need to install it with Yast).
Next activate it with the command (note: all commands should be done as root) "scpm enable". Configure the setup files for one of your networks manually (the files in /etc/sysconfig/network) or with Yast, and then add this network profile to scpm "scpm add home-network" (you can use any name, as long as it's one word). Essentially scpm will take a copy of your /etc/sysconfig/network folder and store it in a database. Then configure your next network (overwriting the existing config) and add it to scpm with a new name "scpm add work-network". Repeat for each aditional network you want to use.
To use your saved configurations use the command,as root, "scpm switch work-network" (note, "scpm -help" will give you a full list of commands), alternately you can select a profile at boot time. To do this you will need to modify your grub menu (under "System/Boot Loader Configuration" in Yast). Here is a copy of my grub menu:
Setup under SuSE 9.3
The wireless card will be detected by Yast, but as a standard Ethernet card. To make sure it will work correctly set the card up as a wireless PCMCIA in Yast, do not use the default settings.