WIRELESS

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (7)
Updated: 4 March 2004
Page Index

NAME

wireless - Wireless Tools and Wireless Extensions

SYNOPSIS

iwconfig
iwpriv -a

DESCRIPTION

The Wireless Extensions is an API allowing you manipulate Wireless LAN networking interfaces. It is composed of a variety of tools and configuration files. It is documented in more detail in the Linux Wireless LAN Howto.
The Wireless Tools are used to change the configuration of wireless LAN networking interfaces on the fly, to get their current configuration, to get statistics and diagnose them. They are described in their own man page, see below for references.
Wireless configuration is specific to each Linux distribution. This man page will contain in the future the configuration procedure for a few common distributions. For the time being, check the file DISTRIBUTIONS.txt included with the Wireless Tools package.

DEBIAN 3.0

In Debian 3.0 (and later) you can configure wireless LAN networking devices using the network configuration tool ifupdown(8).

File :: /etc/network/interfaces
Form :: wireless-<function> <value>
wireless-essid Home
wireless-mode Ad-Hoc
See also :: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools
/usr/share/doc/wireless-tools/README.Debian

SuSE 8.0

SuSE 8.0 (and later) has integrated wireless configuration in their network scripts.

Tool :: Yast2
File :: /etc/sysconfig/network/wireless
/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-*
Form :: WIRELESS_<function>=<value>
WIRELESS_ESSID="Home"
WIRELESS_MODE=Ad-Hoc
See also :: man ifup
info scpm

ORIGINAL PCMCIA SCRIPTS

If you are using the original configuration scripts from the Pcmcia package, you can use this method.

File :: /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts
Form :: *,*,*,*)

    ESSID="Home"

    MODE="Ad-Hoc"

    ;;
See also :: /etc/pcmcia/wireless
File PCMCIA.txt part of Wireless Tools package

AUTHOR

Jean Tourrilhes - jt@hpl.hp.com
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/