Your webbook comes with a wireless card built in, it does 802.11b and 802.11g. I don’t think it does 802.11n but I am prepared to be proved wrong on that one.
The wireless radio circuit can be turned on and off by pressing Fn+F1. By default it is switched off. There is a bit of an issue on the early models, the wifi light on the front of the webbook does not get turned on when the wireless is activated, making it a bit tricky to tell whether wireless is on or off. Don’t worry, there is a fix for this.
press alt+F2 to get the run program dialog and type in
gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options
gksudo means “I want to be superuser when I do this”
gedit is the name of the text editor (lke notepad.exe but lots better)
/etc/modprobe.d/options is a file where we can pass options to hardware drivers as they are loaded.
Because you asked to edit the file in the text editor as the superuser you will have to put your password in first.
Add a line at the end and type the following
options ipw2200 led=1
this tells the wireless driver that it is also responsible for turning on and off the LED on the front of the webbook. Normally this should flicker every few seconds when active, it will be on constantly when associated with a hotspot.
Later models will have this set by default, unfortunately the first batch escaped without it.
When you have wireless turned on you can click the little computer symbol at the top right of the screen to see a list of hotspots within range. Click on one to join it, you may need to enter a WEP or WPA key.
Tags: fix, Networking, wireless
Hi Alan,
Well i can’t even go to my router web console, and no webpages work.
Anyway, tracepath webbookblog.com
jack@ubuntu:~$ tracepath webbookblog.com
gethostbyname2: Unknown host
Hi Alan
(re:41) As you suggested I removed all security and I CAN link to the router and via Firefox get on to the internet. If I use WEP + Mac filtering, WEP and no Mac filtering, WPA + Mac filtering, WPA and no Mac filtering, trying all options using both ASCII & hex equivalent, I get the problem I had before (see 40 above). Do you have any further suggestions I try? Thanks.
Hi,
Probably a very generic question but how do I compile and make executable code from 3rd party linux sources?
I baught a Webbook on Friday, it is my second Linux box, my first being a Nokia N800 tablet. The Ubuntu is significantly more hardcore than the N800, it takes me back to my University Unix/C/Dos days but I do need a basic level of functionality.
I have to say that I think that the Webbook is better in many ways but I do need to get issues like my bluetooth driver to work to make it a useful device for work – i.e. getting it into the mainstreem.
I am trying to get the webbook to use the mobile networking from my mobile phone using a Bluetooth PAN. Bluez released a new gui for bluetooth dongle support: http://www.bluez.org/ How do I take a zipped file such as: bluez-gnome-1.7.tar.gz and turn it into an app working on my webbook?
very many thanks in advance..
Bill
@Bill, sorry to disappoint but the webbook does not have bluetooth hardware. In general to compile a tarball you would do
you might need to install some dependencies if you get an error message (the error message might hint as to what to do, otherwise google is your friend)
Cheers Alan,
I have Bluetooth up an running on a dongle. I can transfer data to/from the ‘phone such as files but not access the internet using the bluetooth PAN. I’m hoping the latest versions of the Bluez will sort things out as I understand that there have been ‘issues’ with the new BT2.1 standard.
Bill
Alan,
Just to let you know that I now have internet access via bluetooth to my mobile phone. In use now…
Folks should follow http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=598890 and look at ALL of the post as the interesting part for hardy is on page 2.
Bill
hi,
i work for carphone and have just got my free webbook, but even tho i have carefully followed your instructions i still cannot get the wifi to work!
Hi Emma,
so you turned it on with FN+F1, but still can’t see any hotspots when clicking on the network manager icon then? Can you go to Applications-Accessories-Terminal then type in “iwconfig” and hit return. Do you see anything about the radio being off? if so press FN+F1 again. Paste the results of that command here and I will see if I can see anything wrong.
Greetings Alan, I’ve spoken to you from Geek Squad in the past prior to the launch of the webbook. I’ve come across a little problem that I can sort on a Windows based machine by using DrTCP to change some of the settings on the wireless side but can’t see where to make these changes in Ubuntu.
Basically what happens is the machine will lock up solid when transferring a lot of files via the wireless connection, this doesn’t happen with the onboard ethernet.
If you change the settings on an XP machine to those shown on the link below the issue appears to be resolved, this has happened on the 2 machines I have at home and on ones some friends have. I quite often use Mirrordir or unison to keep copies between machines and this is when it goes all wrong.
Regards,
Paul
Mate, I am having the same problem as Emma above (and I too am a CPW employee).
I followed your instructions and these were the results from the iwconfig :-
lo no wireless extensions.
eth4 no wireless extensions.
eth5 unassociated ESSID:”Mark home”
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:17:3F:54:94:62
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=8/0
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:on
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
Now I am not exactly untechie, but this is a present for my parents, god knows how my mother would manage if I hadn’t tried to set it up beforehand.
Help.
What do I need to do to get this bliddy thing working on wifi?
Meant to say, once I hit connect it says it is obtaining IP address bus fails each time.
@Mark, looks like the authentication is failing. Do you have WEP or WPA encryption? is it a passphrase or a hex key? Does it work if you temporarily turn off encryption on the router?
@Paul, I haven’t seen a problem with transferring stuff via wireless at all on Linux, I was using one all day today as a wireless gateway to the 3G dongle, we had 5 other computers using it and pushed 250MB over it. At other times I have transferred gigabytes and gigabytes of stuff to and from it over wireless. I use Unison too, but not on the webbook yet, I will give that a go later.
Hi Alan
(Re: 52) As I can connect with a wire and wirelessly without any security, but not wirelessly with any security; I guess it is the security in my router that may be causing the problem. Can you (or anyone else) recommend any ‘compatible’ routers I should use? Thanks
which security settings did you use? WEP/WPA/WPA2 was it a passphrase or hex key? Did it all match on the webbook side?
Hi Alan
if message 65 is for me, (replying to message 64) then my security details are in message 52 and the router details are in message 40. I really appreciate the work you are putting into the website. Thanks
@ Alan
Hi there,
You said that :
’sorry to disappoint but the webbook does not have bluetooth hardware’
Am I hallucinating, but doesn’t the webbook have a bluetooth logo on one of the keys fn+f2 ? If this is the case, and it is in there, would I be able to connect to the modem on my Nokia N95, through bluetooth, to connect to the net ??? That’d be sweet.
Cheers
Nick
@Nick, yes it does have a keyboard with a Bluetooth symbol on it. Also has a Windows logo and we didn’t want that either
It was touch and go to get the UK layout at all, there was some confusion that an “English” keyboard and an American keyboard are in fact not the same thing.
>Shaun Said:
>September 26th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
>Has anyone tried Backtrack 3 with the webbook – does it work and does the card support >injection?
Yes, BT3 does work on the Webbook, as long as you boot using Vesa graphics mode. The Wifi card is a IPW2200 (aka early centrino), so does theoretically support monitor and injection.
IME, monitor works flawlessly, but injection is a bit shaky, so i would recommend getting a Alfa 500mw USB wifi card, i have one and must say, it rocks!. BTW there is several threads in the backtrack forums about getting the ipw2200 working, so read that.
The Alfa will also increase your range.
@Alan
Hello Alan just tried your “Web without wires” above. Could not get it to work in the run dialoge so ran it in a terminal (as root). My ext/modprobe.d/options is empty so i entered a #comments on the first line to help me remember what I put the line in for and then entered the comment exactly as you had entered it on the page above. Gedit refused to save the entry and returned “ERROR PAGE NOT FOUND”. I tried to save several times but could not so closed so i closed without saving. The terminal was showing the following error message ** (gedit: 6433): WARNING **: Hit unhandled case 1 (file not found) in gedit_unrecoverable_savings_error_message_area_new. Any ideas that can help. Richard.
well the file is /etc/modprobe.d/options, not ext/modprobe.d/options and the error message you are getting is file not found. Looks like you are not getting the file right somewhere. The leading / is important.
@Allan
Typo on my part when writing this up. Sorry about that, bit agitated. I coppied the /exc/modprobe.d/options exactly as you wrote it. Just tried it again – same result.
Does this comment (from the article above);
“it does 802.11b and 802.11g. I don’t think it does 802.11n”
mean that the webbook will connect to a wireless B or G router, but not to a wireless N router?
This could explain why I have been struggling unsuccessfully to connect to a wireless network via a Wireless N Belkin router.
I have an Orange mobile internet dongle, but I was hoping to have an easy alternative connection to the internet in order to avoid overshooting the download limit. Just on that point, what is the best way of keeping tabs of my download usage? The download figure in the small Orange mobile broadband screen does not seem to reset to zero at the end of the month. My download limit is 3GB per month.
Seems since I updated to 8.10 it’s not as easy to get the wifi led back on. after loading the modprobe.d I see the above text that you suggest but also
# Stop auto-association.
# LP: #264104
options ipw2200 associate=0
# XXX: Ignore HPA by default. Needs to be revised in jaunty
options libata ignore_hpa=1
Any good translations of that into a more commong toungue?
Well, the # lines mean comment.
I’m sure jaunty is supposed to read January…
Personally, I’d do this:
# Enable double-buffering so gstreamer et. al. work
options quickcam compatible=2
# Default hostap to managed mode
options hostap_pci iw_mode=2
options hostap_cs iw_mode=2
# Stop auto-association.
# LP: #264104
options ipw2200 associate=0
#add fix from webbookblog.com
options ipw220 led=1
# XXX: Ignore HPA by default. Needs to be revisted in jaunty
options libata ignore_hpa=1
Jaunty means Jaunty Jackalope, the next release after the Intrepid Ibex
is there any way of updating to new version of ubuntu?
I would also like to use latex and have installed packages but have no idea how to invoke them, emacs comes up on the menus but not the rest
I haven’t used LaTeX before, it is a typesetting thing isn’t it? The automatic upgrade process generally works, but has failed for a few people so be prepared for a long download to get it and possibly a bit of fixing afterwards. Alternatively you can download a pre-built Intrepid image which will nuke your current webbook and drop on a fresh installation.
Help!
I have a webbook and have had it working for some time. However after updateing the system my wirelss has stopped working altogether and seems to no longer be detected by the system.
I don’t have a wired connection. How do I fix this?
Doogle
you didn’t accidentally press fn+f1 did you?
Dear Alan,
Thanks for your reply. I’ve got no idea what an Intrepid image is. Please explain.
Best,
Ros
i have a problem as with most of you on here. my webbook with ubuntu wont let me access the wireless functions. even worse there seems to be a password system in place. i cannot bypass the system so im looking at at a full system reset. how would i do it coz i dont have a flash drive and no cd rom?