Howto setup USB wireless card

[Kent West]

I've got a new Sid box, with 2.4.20-686 kernel. It has a 3c905c ethernet card, and a USB wireless D-Link DWL-120 "card".

The 3com card works fine (it's how I'm on the net now to send this email).

I'm having trouble finding understandable basic documentation for getting the wireless card working.

First, the modules included with the kernel don't include a module for the dwl-120, but there are kernel modules for it in the package: "linux-wlan-ng-modules-2.4.20-686", which are "drivers for wireless prism2 cards". Unfortunately, there was a bug in them because of the gcc transition in Sid. But Joey Hess to the rescue. About the time I was discovering this bug, Joey was putting a fix in the ftp archives, so I downloaded ftp.debian.org/pool/main/l/linux-wlan-ng/linux-wlan-ng_0.1.15-6_i386.deb which seems to have solved that immediate problem.

Then I did a "modprobe prism2_usb", and now usbview shows the dwl-120 as a prism2_usb device.

However, I don't know where to go from here. I've never worked with two NICs in a box before. I assume I'll have to make some sort of entry in /etc/networking/interfaces and then restart /etc/init.d/networking, but I have no idea what entries to make (dhcp desired on both NICs, but I can go static on the dwl-120 temporarily if necessary to get me started).

I have the 3com attached to one network, and I want to have the dwl-120 attached to a different network. I want to be able to ssh into this box from the dwl side and then download stuff from the much faster 3com side. I guess that makes this box a gateway? a router? I guess this means I need to learn about iptables? ip masquerading?

I'm pretty comfortable with Linux (Debian in particular), and am fairly conversant with networking from an end-user perspective, but network administration (setting up gateways, routers, firewalls) is just beyond my experience/knowledge level, but not beyond my ability to learn. I just need a "thin manual" introducing the concepts (what's a gateway vs what's a router vs what's ip masquerading vs what's iptables, etc, and some general examples), and then perhaps some specific information as to getting the right settings for this dwl-120.

I appreciate any and all responses (except the ones that say nothing but "RTFM" - instead point me to which Fine Manual to read).

Thanks!

Kent





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