[SOLVED]How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

[DeathKitten]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

Forgive me if this is a stupid question... but do you have anywhere you could go and temporarily plug your computer directly into a router or modem with network cable, just to let you install the packages you need to fix things?

I may have been misunderstanding things said in the thread, but it sounds like the problem is a lack of wifi connection, yes? I know my wired LAN connection works on my desktop computer without having to load KDE.

[ultrageeky]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

Forgive me if this is a stupid question... but do you have anywhere you could go and temporarily plug your computer directly into a router or modem with network cable, just to let you install the packages you need to fix things?

I may have been misunderstanding things said in the thread, but it sounds like the problem is a lack of wifi connection, yes? I know my wired LAN connection works on my desktop computer without having to load KDE.

You're not being stupid and it's a goo suggestion. I thought about doing just that but I'm unable to try it until tomorrow because of the router's location. Even so, when the Desktop loads it is able to utilise my wifi adapter ergo it must be possible to utilise it without the Desktop being loaded.

[GreyGeek]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

sudo iwlist scanning

shows that your wireless chip is being recognizes as wlan0.

sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid "whatever' mode Managed

should set your essid and mode. Since you are using an insecure WEP connection you should be good to go.

Just issue:
sudo ifdown --force -a
sudo ifup wlan0

[ultrageeky]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

I've opted to download the latest 9.04 iso. My intention is to clean the apt caches/logs, add the newly downloaded disc as a repo (apt-cdrom add (?)) or copy the source files to /var/cache/apt/archive then retry to re-install kdebase-workspace. Hopefully it'll work. If not, at least I'll have an up-to-date version of the Live Disk.

If anyone does know how to start a wireless network device from within Command Line then please post the method.

Also, just in case this helps, I recall one of the outputs from one of the commands I issued mentioned that the device was "sleeping"; does it need waking-up?

----

GreyGeek, you posted just before I tried to post the above comment. I'll give your instructions a go after I've downloaded the new Live Disk. Thank you for replying.

[GreyGeek]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

Ah! "Sleeping".

Are you dual booting with Windows? It often puts wireless devices to sleep during shutdown. This is a power saving measures for when the machine is turned on again.

Read "man iwconfig" under the "power" section, copied here:

power
Used to manipulate power management scheme parameters and mode.
To set the period between wake ups, enter period `value'. To set the timeout before
going back to sleep, enter timeout `value'. To set the generic level of power saving,
enter saving `value'. You can also add the min and max modifiers. By default, those val‐
ues are in seconds, append the suffix m or u to specify values in milliseconds or
microseconds. Sometimes, those values are without units (number of beacon periods, dwell,
percentage or similar).
off and on disable and reenable power management. Finally, you may set the power manage‐
ment mode to all (receive all packets), unicast (receive unicast packets only, discard
multicast and broadcast) and multicast (receive multicast and broadcast only, discard
unicast packets).
Examples :
iwconfig eth0 power period 2
iwconfig eth0 power 500m unicast
iwconfig eth0 power timeout 300u all
iwconfig eth0 power saving 3
iwconfig eth0 power off
iwconfig eth0 power min period 2 power max period 4

[ultrageeky]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

No. No, duel booting. I've seen the FAQ that describes the duel boot issue and provides a solution. If only this were so easy to solve.

The Live Disk Download has now completed so I'll get on with the actions agreed in my previous post.

[flarson]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

It seems you are using wifi rather than wired ethernet to access the network. This is one of network-manager's biggest failings, in my opinion. It will not bring up the wireless until you login to the GUI and an applet starts. The directions for wired ethernet almost got you there but not quit, because you need to configure wlan0 instead of eth0. You probably have removed all network-manger packages as directed? If not, do so. Then edit /etc/network /interfaces to look like this.

auto lo eth0
iface lo inet loopback
auto wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid yourssid
wpa-psk your_passphrase

From a previous post I think "yourssid" should be Default. Place your passphrase where your_passphrase is. Then run

sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo ifup wlan0

That should get you a wifi connection if you are using dhcp.

[ultrageeky]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

Thank you everybody for your help.

I'm very pleased to say that I do now have my Desktop up and running. I finally got access to my router so was able to connect my PC directly to it (a knew 400 extension cables would come in handy one day ).

Once the computer and router were directly connected via LAN cable I was able to re-run the upgrade.

I seriously think that Linux needs to improve Command Line Wi-Fi access.

Using the Live Disk, I did download the missing packages directly to "/var/cache/apt/archive" then tried to install them with "apt-get install --no-download [package name]" and even "dpkg -i [package name]" but I kept getting package dependency errors and package overwrite issues.

It's been a learning curve. I now know where apt stores its packages, how to force it to install them (didn't work but..), how to get dpkg to install packages, how to use the command line to check for hardware devices and how to use the command line to set-up (non-Wi-Fi) Internet adapters.

Mando_Hacker, I would need to adapt your code to a non-encrypted Wi-Fi connection (no session ID and no Passphrase) but I'll give it a go sometime just to see what happens.

Mando, as well as using all the above commands (excluding yours), I did adapt them to use with my Wi-Fi adapter (e.g wlan0 not eth0 and iwconfig not ifconfig). One of the last errors I received was "Master0 unknown hardware address type 801". That's when I decided enough was enough and forced my way to "nick" the router.

Just in case anyone wants to know: I downloaded the missing packages from "http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/kde"

Again, thank you to everybody who offered help: you have taught me something; and I will one day teach it somebody else.

[GreyGeek]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

Would you briefly summarize what you did and then mark the thread [SOLVED]?

[flarson]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

For unencrypted just use

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid yourssid

The "Master0 unknown hardware address type 801" is a well know and harmless message. It does not indicate a problem.

[ultrageeky]

Re: How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

Would you briefly summarize what you did and then mark the thread [SOLVED]?

I can't mark the thread as solved because I still don't know how to access the Internet using wi-fi without loading to a graphical desktop environment.

However, I can summarize how I restored my desktop environment:

• Gave up trying to connect via my wi-fi adaptor
• Eventually gained access to my router
• Connected my Pc to my router via LAN cable
• Booted to shell
• Issued the command "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get upgrade" (under "sudo su")
• After the update had completed, used "startx" to confirm the desktop environment had been restored
• Switched off the PC
• Disconnected the LAN cable
• reconnected my wi-fi adapter
• Booted into the BIOS
• Disabled the motherboard's onboard LAN adapter, then booted my PC (not physically :P )
• PC loaded to the desktop and successfully connected with my router via wi-fi

Just to be clear, the computer always connected with my router via wi-fi while-so-ever the graphical desktop environment was loaded. The issue was that the computer wouldn't connect with the router via wi-fi without the graphical desktop environment being loaded - this is still an active issue.

The problem showed after a distribution upgrade failed to download and install kdebase and other parts of the graphical desktop environment. The issue wouldn't have shown had I been able to load my desktop.

Mando, thank you for posting back. When I've tried your solution and know it to successfully work then I will change the thread's status to solved. At the moment, I don't want to play with my configuration until I've caught up with my workload.

[flarson]

Re: [SOLVED]How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

The problem you just identified is exactly why I use wicd rather than network-manager when I want a GUI wifi tool. There is a lot of info in this forum about using wicd, and I can say that while I keep trying in Karmic to see if KDE will work without it, it hasn't yet. It seems that effort to include wicd in KDE4 will cause it to operate like network-manager, in that it will not bring up the interface until the GUI starts. If that continues to be true I will continue to use stand alone wicd, as it works very well.

[GreyGeek]

Re: [SOLVED]How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

Mando,
Since the last upgrade to Karmic I started getting disconnects from my wireless router when I put a load on it. KNetworkManager then refused to reconnect. It would just spin its circling balls. So, I installed wicd and the problem is solved.

Waiting until the KDE gui is up before the wireless is connected is a serious problem if the connection tool does not connect quickly or isn't stable. I think KNWM took hits in both areas with the last upgrade. I had been using it without problems from the first day I installed Karmic, and I have been using it without problems since I installed Jaunty on my primary partition last February. The KNWM dev crew ought to take a look at the wicd source code. I doubt that it is the Qt gui stuff that is getting in the way, but it could be the Qt threading.

[ultrageeky]

Re: [SOLVED]How Do I Access the Internet without Loading to a Desktop Environment

I'll look into wicd, thank you for suggesting it.