MEPIS wireless networking: it just works

I was very pleased today to discover that with a very little bit of pain, I could switch between wifi networks (hotel vs. convention centre) with my MEPIS-booted Thinkpad. To make matters more comical, my teammate from EMF, Marcelo Paternostro, made the mistake of upgrading his IBM Access Connections client to the latest version (4.23) from a stable, working 4.12, only to discover that the whole thing now includes an layer over top preventing you from doing anything - adding profiles, editing profiles, exporting profiles... even something as seemingly innocuous as searching for a network!

After much pain and googling, he ultimately had to uninstall the new client and reinstall the old client, losing his old suddenly unexportable connection profiles. The lesson here: upgrading Windows software when you don't have to (ie., haven't been ordered to do so by Corporate) is BAD.

Anyway, for anyone who like me initially had some apprehension about trying to do EclipseCON w/ Linux instead of Windows, here's a short list of the tools (read: debian/kubuntu/mepis packages) I'm using, and why.

airsnort, airmon	Packet sniffer to detect available networks, tool to put network card into monitor mode sudo airmon start eth1; sudo airsnort; sudo airmon stop eth1; sudo ifdown eth1; sudo ifup eth1
kwifimanager	Eyecandy: task tray icon to show wifi status/strength
/etc/mepis-network/wireless	Directory to store wifi profiles. I have one file per profile, and simply copy the one I need from "eclipsecon" or "tmobile" into "default" in order to make it the active one. Here's a sample - I don't know if all the blank lines are required or not. IF_WIRELESS_ESSID="EclipseCon" IF_WIRELESS_NICK="EclipseCon" IF_WIRELESS_CHANNEL="" IF_WIRELESS_FREQ="" IF_WIRELESS_KEY="" IF_WIRELESS_KEYMODE=""
.alias	Shortcut to restart network card(s): alias NR='sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart'

So that's it:

• cd /etc/mepis-network/wireless; cp eclipsecon default; NR; , or
• cd /etc/mepis-network/wireless; cp tmobile default; NR;

(You could also do ifdown eth1; ifup eth1 instead of restarting all network cards.)