Wifi

This article describes the setup of a Wifi network device.

Wifi during installation
If a Wifi connection is needed while installing Gentoo, note that the Gentoo minimal install CD has a limited number of drivers available, and provides only wpa_cli (and not wpa_gui) for configuring for WPA/WPA2/Enterprise connections.

If the minimal install CD does not contain the required drivers or the graphical frontend to wpa_supplicant is preferred, choose a different live CD such as the System Rescue CD. Be aware that some special steps may be required when using a non-Gentoo live CD.

Hardware detection
First detect the Wifi controllers. You can use lspci or lsusb for this task.

If a linux (livecd/usb) is booted that makes a Wifi connection:

The driver will be identified at "Kernel driver in use:"

If a linux is booted that does not make a Wifi connection:

The driver may be identified by copying the list of PCIID's that the command produces and pasting at http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/

May produce PCI ID, manufacturer, make, model, or chipset. Of these, the chipset may be the most useful information. Googling linuxwireless.org is often the shortest way to find a USB NIC driver and firmware name.

Will produce a list of all drivers whether the device is PCI or USB connected.

WEXT
The "cfg80211 wireless extensions compatibility" option aka WEXT will support old wireless-tools & iwconfig and will be needed only for exotic or very old devices.

Device drivers
Dependent on your hardware you need to activate the corresponding kernel options. The recommendation is compiling the drivers as modules. Also be sure to enable AES cipher support in the kernel if the network you are connecting to requires it.

LED support
To enable LED triggers for different packet receive/transmit events, compile the kernel with the following options:

Firmware
In addition to the kernel driver, some chipsets also require firmware. If required, locate it on the following list and install it:

If the driver requires firmware but does not appear on the list, it will be necessary to download it manually and place it in.

Testing
After a reboot with the new kernel or after loading the modules, check that the device is ready using one of following methods:

Using :

Using :

Using if your driver supports the wireless extensions stack. Non-wireless interfaces will be listed with "no wireless extensions":


 * Using ,if your driver supports the nl80211 stack

If not, check dmesg for errors:

External resources
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