Wifi

This article describes the setup of a Wifi network device.

Gentoo Install via WIFI
If installing Gentoo and a wifi connection is needed for installation:

The Gentoo minimal install CD has a limited set of wifi drivers available, and provides wpa_cli but not wpa_gui for setup for WPA/WPA2/Enterprise connections. If your card is not supported there, or you would prefer the graphical frontend to configure wpa_supplicant, you should use an alternative livecd. A good example is the System Rescue CD (http://sysresccd.org/Download), but be sure to take note of the special steps that may be needed for installing from non-Gentoo livecds: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Installation_alternatives#Installation_from_non-Gentoo_LiveCDs.

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 pciid manufacturer make model 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.

IEEE 802.11
Minstrel and its 802.11n support is a rate control algorithm should always be activated.

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 your kernel with the following options:

Firmware
Besides the kernel driver, you will also need firmware, expand section to see firmware/hardware table and notes of supported devices:

b43
Install the required package, e.g for :

linux-firmware
Install the required package, e.g for :

If there is no package, you have to download the firmware and move it to yourself.

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: