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First thing you need to do is purchase a wireless adapter card with a prism2 chipset. Just go to google and type in linux wireless adapters and track one down.

If you are using a fairly good wireless distro it should pick up the card automatically.

Ok, Now you have the card now what, you plugged it in and look to the bottom write where the Windows XP wireless Icon usually is and find nothing.

There is no Zero config utility with linux, but they do have built in tools to help connect to wireless networks.

Now you need to find the Command line terminal, it usually looks like a window with a shell because it is a shell.

Now let’s test to see if you have your card working. Type in iwlist at the command prompt. If it doesn’t let you, then you might have enter administrator mode.

You can enter administrator mode by typing su at the command prompt. Then you will be asked for the administrator password.

Now type in iwlist at the command prompt. This will give you a ton of tools to work with. Once you have typed in iwlist and nothing happens then you probably don’t have the right card or it’s configured wrong.

Check and make sure you don’t have any other wireless network adapters active and disable them if they are. Also make sure that your wireless adapter is set to start up at boot time. You need to look for your system utilities area..it’s like the Microsoft control panel called Yast.

By the way your wireless adapter should be named wlan0

The iwlist command will give a list of options that look like this:
usage: iwlist [interface] scanning

[interface] frequency

[interface] channel

[interface] bitrate

[interface] rate

[interface] encryption

[interface] key

[interface] power

[interface] txpower

[interface] retry

[interface] ap

[interface] accesspoints

[interface] peers

[interface] event

All of these options can give you various detailed information about surrounding wireless networks.

If you type in iwist scanning it will give a out of all wireless networks available to you with an output like this:

wlan0 Scan completed :

Cell 01 - Address: 00:14:BF:75:31:FD

ESSID:”Len”

Mode:Managed

Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)

Quality:2/94 Signal level:-84 dBm Noise level:-154 dBm

Encryption key:on

Bit Rate:1 Mb/s

Bit Rate:2 Mb/s

Bit Rate:5.5 Mb/s

Bit Rate:11 Mb/s

Bit Rate:18 Mb/s

Bit Rate:24 Mb/s

Bit Rate:36 Mb/s

Bit Rate:54 Mb/s

Bit Rate:6 Mb/s

Bit Rate:9 Mb/s

Bit Rate:12 Mb/s

Bit Rate:48 Mb/s

Extra:bcn_int=100

This gives you the Network Name, MAC address, Frequency, encryption and much more. This information can be used to join your preferred network.

If you are monitoring certain access point you can type in iwlist accesspoints and get the listing of each nearby access point with the MAC address.

Once you have located the access point you want to connect with it’ time to start using another command called iwconfig.

iwconfig is used to configure your wireless adapter so you can connect it to your preferred network. You can configure every thing from the ESSID to the transmit power of your wireless adapter.

sYNOPSIS

iwconfig [interface]

iwconfig interface [essid X] [nwid N] [freq F] [channel C]

[sens S] [mode M] [ap A] [nick NN]

[rate R] [rts RT] [frag FT] [txpower T]

[enc E] [key K] [power P] [retry R]

[commit]

The syntax for using the iwconfig command is: iwconfig (interface name) then what ever you want to configure. So if you want to configure the ESSID you would type iwconfig wlan0 essid “network name”.

Now that you know that the tools are there go to work!!!

Learn everything you could ever want to know about wireless networking technology at http://www.wirelessninja.com Learn how to prevent hackers from exploiting your wireless network. Also learn how to prevent the most dangerous computer threat, social engineering.

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Are you regularly backing up the hard drive on your PC?
It has been said that there are two kinds of people …
those who have had a hard disk crash and those who will.
I’ll tell you some easy ways to protect your data.

And I present my qualifications by saying that I have experience
with data storage and backup.
And you know the definition of experience right?
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted!

Let me begin by saying that I have used many different
kinds of backup devices over the years.
I have used cassette tapes, floppy disks, tape cartridges,
disk cartridges, writable CDs, writable DVDs, and external drives.
And I still recommend some form of this kind of backup
today.
For today’s high-capacity disk drives, you can’t go
wrong by backing up, at the least, your critical data
on some external media.
Because even if you don’t use your PC to store sensitive
personal or financial data, there are still
configuration settings for your PC you may not want to lose.

Now you can buy hardware and software that automatically starts backups
and cycles backup media in and out of the backup device as necessary.
But that tends to be pricy and best left to servers.
I’ll leave that topic for another time.

If your system has a drive that supports writable CDs
or DVDs you can manually backup your hard drive on this
type of media.
Writable CDs and DVDs can hold from 650 megabytes (MB)
up to 4 gigabtyes (GB) and more of data.
Your CD or DVD writer probably came with software that
lets you drag copies of data from the hard drive
to the CD or DVD drive folder.
Or it may even include some automatic backup software.
One disadvantage of CDs and even DVDs is that hard
drives today typically won’t fit on one of these.
With hard drives in the range of 10-200GB are common.
And it’s not unusual to see 250GB drives now.
Another disadvantage is the write speed.
Even with high-speed CD or DVD writers it can take a long while.

Another option is an external disk drive.
Large sizes are available which makes it possible
to backup your entire hard drive in many cases.
And the hard disk drives are very fast.
You can copy an entire drive quickly.

However many people find it difficult to make data backups
on a regular schedule.
I’m a people! I mean I’m a person and I just can’t
seem to make the time for backing up my data.

So I’ll tell you what I do.
I use mirrors! Not smoke and mirrors … just mirrors.
In my machine I have two hard disk drives … not to double
my storage capacity, but to provide a continuous backup
of my hard drive.
Every time my computer writes to the disk drive, it actually
writes the same data to two different disk drives. They
are a mirror image of one another.
Most Windows computers since Windows NT have had this
capability.

The first, and most painful part, is to get two hard drives
in your system.
I usually buy my computers that way, but
I have added hard drives later.
It’s not exorbitantly expensive though.
Hard drives, even large hard drives, are reasonably priced these days.
It’s usually best to have the two hard drives the same size
(or you waste space in some form).
And I like to have the drives from the same manufacturer
(but maybe I’m just anal).
I say painful, because you, or someone will have to open up your
PC and put a second drive in if doesn’t already have one.
If you don’t feel qualified to do this, check with your
nearest PC store.
Most will do it for you, for a fee, or for free if you buy
the hard disk there.
They may even perform the next step which is to set up the mirror.

After that, you go to the Control Panel, select Administrative Tools,
then select Computer Management, then click on Disk Management.
You right-click on the existing or “old” volume and select “Add Mirror”, then
right-click on the new disk that will host the mirror and select “Add Mirror”.
This will establish a mirror and initially copy the
data from the “old” drive to the “new” mirror. Thereafter, the
data is automatically written to both drives when changes or updates
occur.
You can also view the status of your mirrored volumes to make sure the
mirrors are healthy and all your data is backed up.
On Windows systems you may not see the options for mirrors until
you have a new unused drive in your system on which you can create a mirror.
There are detailed instructions for your version of Windows
on Microsoft’s site.

I recommend to all my friends to set up mirrored disks.
I’ve had a couple of friends call to tell me they had a
a hard disk crash.
Instead of a catastophic loss of data, this turned into a minor inconvenience while we recovered
the data from the other disk.
They expressed undying gratitude and told me they would be eternally indebted …
because they couldn’t pay me anything!

What will your reaction be when you have that hard disk crash?

Hard disk drive reviews and recommendations at

ShoppingDroid.com

By Mike Furlong

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