what sort of wifi card do you have, if its a prism2 based card, you should have very little problem getting it up and running - if not, like me and my acx100 chipset based one, u'll have lots of fun and head scratching to go. Id whole heartedly recommend you download the iso for Knoppix-STD (knoppix being a full linux os on a bootable cdrom, STD being the security tools distro- which comes with all the wireless drivers.) Once that's booted it will autodetect all your devices, at which point you can go about rooting out all the config options.
If you have any major probs give me a shout and im sure either myself or Richard should be able to sort you out.
Well am having problems with my wifi setup at the moment anyway, the DNS keeps periodically dropping out which is a little annoying. I thought it might be the BT DNS but i only loose it on the wifi connected comps and not the etherneted one. Will find out what chip is on my Linksys card soon.
Am hopefully getting an oldish comp from hazel's dad (prolly PII or PIII era) so might play with Linux on that rather than the using the 40Gb de(ath)skstar i have kicking about on my propper comp.
One quick question what sizes do you recommend for partitions; boot, main and swap etc?
Knoppix-STD seems like its a bit of a wardriving tool LOL but handy to be able to get drivers and stuff from and a play with linux without the hassel of the install, god bless my 1Gb of ram.
re partition sizes - it really all depends on your setup - when I first started, they reccomended twice your memory, but that was with 24mb of ram, having 2gb of swap is entirely unlikely. also, with filesystems like ext3 or reiserFS there's no real need to split between / /usr and /home on a basic system - if you start running a full server then things might be diff but one partition for your data, one for swap and check the forum's for specifics for recommended sizes for your setup depending on what your gonna use it for.
and yeah STD is a bit of a war tool - but it autodetect's everything so you can pilfer the conf files
is it just the DNS that goes down - can you still ping the eth machines and the dns server itself? if so try enabling caching DNS on your router and using it as the your dns server.
When the DNS is down can still ping the other computers (one wired, one wireless), i can also still ping the router and ADSL modem but i can't ping any of the DNS IP's. Alas the router doesn't have the option to cache the DNS.
I e-mailed linksys and they said that having a software firewall running was the problem. Screw them if they expect me to get rid of zone alarm though, i've e-mailed them back to find out if there is someway to work-round the issue via the ZA settings or the Router settings.
i'm assuming that the router does NAT as you can access adsl from more than one comp at a time, at a push a NAT with no port forwards assigned and a firewall with block all incoming unless something else rules would replace zone alarm - thats what my dlink does, and i'll be damned if im using a software firewall.
it might also be an xp problem - there is a knowledge base article on xp disconnecting and reconnecting wlan cards for no apparant reason and there is a patch for it - im sure I heard that that could cause problems with connectivity. It was strange - it would only occur once in a while, and even then it would only occur on some but not all of identically setup and ghosted machines. It'd be worth a poke around the MS KB to see.
If you always run zone alarm - and trust it - then just put the wlan card's ip add in the dmz and the router's firewall will ignore it. That may solve that.
If you have any major probs give me a shout and im sure either myself or Richard should be able to sort you out.
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Am hopefully getting an oldish comp from hazel's dad (prolly PII or PIII era) so might play with Linux on that rather than the using the 40Gb de(ath)skstar i have kicking about on my propper comp.
One quick question what sizes do you recommend for partitions; boot, main and swap etc?
Knoppix-STD seems like its a bit of a wardriving tool LOL but handy to be able to get drivers and stuff from and a play with linux without the hassel of the install, god bless my 1Gb of ram.
Reply
and yeah STD is a bit of a war tool - but it autodetect's everything so you can pilfer the conf files
is it just the DNS that goes down - can you still ping the eth machines and the dns server itself? if so try enabling caching DNS on your router and using it as the your dns server.
Reply
I e-mailed linksys and they said that having a software firewall running was the problem. Screw them if they expect me to get rid of zone alarm though, i've e-mailed them back to find out if there is someway to work-round the issue via the ZA settings or the Router settings.
Reply
i'm assuming that the router does NAT as you can access adsl from more than one comp at a time, at a push a NAT with no port forwards assigned and a firewall with block all incoming unless something else rules would replace zone alarm - thats what my dlink does, and i'll be damned if im using a software firewall.
it might also be an xp problem - there is a knowledge base article on xp disconnecting and reconnecting wlan cards for no apparant reason and there is a patch for it - im sure I heard that that could cause problems with connectivity. It was strange - it would only occur once in a while, and even then it would only occur on some but not all of identically setup and ghosted machines. It'd be worth a poke around the MS KB to see.
If you always run zone alarm - and trust it - then just put the wlan card's ip add in the dmz and the router's firewall will ignore it. That may solve that.
HTH,
Mike
Reply
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