Ubuntu 6.10 - Setting up a Wireless Network with D-Link WDA-1320
The D-Link WDA-1320 is supported by Ubuntu 6.10 “Edgy Eft ” ‘out of the box’. This is great news, as so far there have been innumerable issues with wireless support in Linux. Let’s get right down to business:
- Get your Ubuntu installation CD and insert into the CDROM of the computer you will be installing the network card into.
- Go to a command prompt/terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r`
- This will install all the packages necessary for the system to ’see’ your new card.
- Close the terminal window.
- Open Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration -> Synaptic …).
- Click the Search button and look for “network manager”.
- Select the packages network-manager and network-manager-gnome to be installed.
- Click Apply to invoke the installation.
- After the installation completes close Synaptic.
- Now you will need to disable any wired networking cards (network manager tends to get confused easily if there are some still available). If you don’t have any wired network devices (ethn, where n is a number) skip ahead to step 13.
- Open the network connections (System -> Administration -> Networking) and uncheck any checked connections.
- Close the Networking window.
- Now power down the Ubuntu computer (turn it off).
- Open the case, install the card into an available PCI slot, and close everything back up again.
- Turn the computer back on again.
- You can now see the wireless networks in your area by clicking on the networking icon in the panel notification area. To connect to one, simply click on it.
- You may or may not need to provide security information to access that network.
January 25th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Hi, I’m having a problem at the command propmt when inputing:
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r`
when i press enter, i get this:
reading package list… done
building dependency tree
reading state information… done
e: couldn’t find package linux-restricted-modules-uname -r
anything i could be doing wrong?
January 25th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Have you tried copy/pasting the command into your terminal window (right-click and select paste)?
If you are typing it in, be sure to use the back-tics located above your tab key, and not the normal apostrophe.
The error message indicates that it didn’t recognize the back-tics properly.
There is one more thing you can try: make sure you have all the correct repositories enabled in Synaptic:
System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.
[enter your password] > Settings > Repositories.
Ubuntu 6.10 tab > check all options under Internet.
Optionally uncheck all options under CD-ROM / DVD so that it no longer asks you for your CD everytime you want to update something, but rather it will download the latest version for you.
Let me know if this helped you out. If it didn’t let me know your results and I’ll research it a bit further.
Good luck!
January 27th, 2007 at 6:34 am
thanks for clearing that up~! but after installing the card and booting up it is not detecting it.
the network manager applet is installed but it reads ‘no network connection’.
under networking, the ‘wired connection’ seems to be rechecked after i unchecked it as per instructions. also, there is no new ‘wireless connection’ that one would expect.
the ‘power’ light on the networking card keeps a steady blink, but the ‘activity’ light does not turn on.
on my laptop (running windows), there is no problem detecting the wireless network.. i am stumped~
also, under repositories i checked all under Internet..
February 20th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Thank you so much for the info, i’m a virgin linux user (and its way above my head) but i’ve got my wireless card working now thanks to your blog entry and its great!
erin
March 1st, 2007 at 11:50 pm
I followed the initial instructions and when I searched for the “network manager” and “network manager gnome” I didn’t come up with anything that was install-able.