PuppyLinux: I. With the Network Wizard

This "how-to" explains how to connnect your computer to a wireless network (also known as WiFi or IEEE 802.11) with Puppy Linux. You can use the Network wizard or command line interface. Specifically it refers to Puppy 2.16 ((with screenshots from the "EZPup" package from http://dotpups.de/dotpups/WindowManagers/EZpup-2.1.7.pet∞ )) but should work similarly on all newer Puppies aswell. For a brief text-only version see WirelessNetworkinginbrief.

I. With the Network Wizard

First click on the "Connect" icon (circled here in red) on the desktop:

The following screen should appear.

Detecting your wireless adapter

1. Does a wireless device (eth0, wlan0, rausb0,...) appear on the list under Driver Modules? In this example, the device appearing is the ethernet card. If yes, skip to step 7.

2. Click on the "Load driver" button. The following screen appears:

Choose "Automatic" from the list and click OK.
If a new device is successfully found, skip to "Connecting to a Network" (below)

3. As Puppy didn't recognise automatically the linux driver for your card, you have to find manually which one you have to use.

To do this you need the exact model of your card (WUSB54G V4,...). If it is PCMCIA, USB or PCI, just read it on the box or directly on the card. If you have a laptop then look at your computer model, which is written under your laptop. You'll find the card's model on the brand website.
Check WirelessWorking for a list of adapters working with Puppy.
To be sure no one had any problem in Puppy with this wireless card, search for your model with this search tool∞
You might find threads with some posts by Tempestuous∞ (the wireless guru) who explains some particular cases.
Then you just have to Google∞ the model of your card and after looking in every website you'll find the linux driver (RT2570, Orinoco,iw2200,ndiswrapper...) associated with your card.

4. Once you've found the linux driver you have to use, click on the "Load driver". The following screen appears, which allows you to choose the driver you want to use with your card.

If on the internet you found that your card can only work with "ndiswrapper", continue to step 5. if not, go directly to step 6.

5. Using "Ndiswrapper" means you have to use the drivers designed for Microsoft Windows provided with your card. If you don't have them, just download them on the website of the brand (linksys, D-link,...). It consist of two files: a .sys and a .inf. Put them somewhere you can easily browse to. Then go back to the Network Wizard and click on ndiswrapper, browse to your .inf file and select it.

6. When you've chosen the right driver or browsed to the .inf file, the wizard will load the driver. Press the Ok button and you will go back to the following screen:

You should see a new device has appeared. Click save so you don't have to do all this each time you boot Puppy.

Here you are! Your wireless device works with Puppy! Now, we are going to see how to connect to a network. If you have any encryption system on your wireless network, we advise to momentarily disable it when you first try to connect.

Connecting to a network

7. Click on the device name, in this case eth0. This screen appears:

8. Click on the "Wireless" button. the following screen will appear:

9. Click the "Scan" button at the bottom. If you get the message "no networks found" it is worth clicking on the "Scan" button a couple more times. After a few seconds, a list of the wireless networks surrounding you will appear:

Choose one and click OK. You go back to this screen:

You can see the name of the network you chose appeared automatically.
According to the encryption of tour network:
- no encryption, procede to step 12
- WEP encryption, procede to step 10
- WPA/TKIP encryption, procede to step 11

10. If you click on "WEP", you will see the following screen:

Just key in the WEP key of your network next to the "key" part, and then go to step 12.

11. If you click on WPA/TKIP, you will see the following screen:

choose the options according to your network and type in the key.

12. Once you've selected all the appropriate options for your network, save the connection details by clicking on "Save". This enables Puppy to connect to this network when Puppy boots up. The network name will appear on the left side of the screen:

13. Then click on "Use This Profile" to connect to the selected network.
You will come back to this screen:

Rather than "Unable to connect to a wireless network" under "REPORT ON TEST OF ... CONNECTION" it will read "Puppy detected an alive network" (For the purposes of this screenshot I didn't have a wireless network around)
In this screen just click the "Auto DHCP" button so you have an address on the network and...
if "connection successful" appears, you are connected!

If it doesn't work, try the "static IP" and input the addresses manually.

Troubleshooting

If you cannot see any network with your card:
- check that you have enabled wireless on your router if it is a new router
- you may have used the wrong driver for your device
- some files are missing to make your device work. Search the forum∞ for more info.

II. With the command line

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_hostif.php∞

1. Open an RXVT window and check that Puppy really sees your wireless card with the command iwconfig (no params). That should show your wireless connection with name - typically wlan0.

2. Assuming you have an access point or router to talk to, you will then need to customise the wireless configuration with a command along the lines of:
iwconfig wlan0 channel 7 essid pupppplaypen mode managed key s:puppy
Of course you have to know the channel, SSID, mode and WEP key for this command to work. Italics used for the items you need to customise.

3. Once you are connected to the wireless network, you need to set the IP address (ignoring the use of DHCP for the time being) with a command looking like:
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.41 netmask 255.255.255.0
The above assumes that your local net has an address range of 192.168.1.xxx - commonly the case.

4. Now for a route command to tell Puppy the way to other kennels:
route add -net default gw 192.168.1.254 netmask 0.0.0.0
The gateway (gw) is the router gateway on your managed network.

5. Now open ROX and find /etc/resolv.conf; use Open as Text
Enter the DNS name server addresses given by your ISP, e.g.
nameserver 202.63.39.130
nameserver 202.63.43.130
Save the file and exit ROX.

6. Test that the connection works via Ping, e.g.
ping www.google.com
Use ctrl+c to exit from ping.

7. If that works, you can open your browser and sift the puppy litter on the internet.

8. The commands can be put into a script once they work.

Wireless notes

For anyone wanting to add wireless support to Puppy, here's what I know.
I see that many wireless drivers are present in Puppy 1.0.2, including ndiswrapper, the application that "wraps" Windows drivers into Linux, for otherwise unsupported wireless adaptors - but the ndiswrapper binary is missing.
So I suppose the utilities for the other wireless driver families are missing, too??

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/∞ is a comprehensive listing of the various wireless chipsets and their associated Linux drivers.

I know that the madwifi package http://madwifi.sourceforge.net/∞ is for Atheros chipsets.

Orinoco is a brand name used by more than one manufacturer (because of ownership changes) and each has a different driver.

And sadly for me, the drivers and utilities for Prism2-based adaptors - linux-wlan-ng (www.linux-wlan.org) are missing completely. This package includes a utility to load and configure the driver - wlanctl-ng, plus other utilities and quite a few configuration files.

Wifi on Linux∞
wifi on linux∞