Wednesday, January 05, 2011

WiFi in Haiku

Yes, finally I have a wifi internet connection in Haiku on my EeePC901.
I got this after I installed Haiku r40074 gcc2hybrid.
However, it's not all good news as I'll explain.
When I opened Network Preferences, the Network Adapter box showed ONLY the RaLink 2860 card and not the ethernet card.
So, I set this driver up for service but no internet. Then I remembered that wifi in Haiku currenbtly cannot handle WPA security, only WEP.
First I tried NO security and sure enough this worked perfectly. A major step forward for Haiku.
Next I configured my router for WEP, but this time I couldn't get a connection. What I found most strange was that nothing ever appeared to ask me to input the security key.
OK, but the driver works as long as there's no security.
But why does the ethernet card not appear in Network Preferences?
I turned off both wifi signals in our house but even so, the ethernet driver never appeared in Preferences.
Actually, there's currently a discussion in the Haiku forum that's somewhat related, so I'll keep an eye on that.
Edit: 8/01/2010
Another useful thread has appeared in the Haiku Forum on the wifi issue. It seems the OP has very similar wifi problems to my own, principally that wifi works fine on my EeePC901 (ralink 2860) but ONLY if no wifi security is chosen and not when WEP is selected.
However, I found out here how the security key is entered in Haiku wifi which is explained in the Haiku Guide.
I did however try the recommendation as follows:

-->ifconfig /dev/net/ralink2860/0 ssid my_security_key

However, even with or without a space after the security key input, (as suggested in the thread) no connection was made.
Indeed, the command seemed to complete in milliseconds whereas a wifi connection normally takes a second or two to establish itself. So, as was mentioned in the thread, this may well be a bug.

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