# ethernet bridge to ad hoc wireless network



## SquintRingo (Aug 20, 2008)

Hello, and thanks ahead for help. I apologize if this is a seemingly stupid question but I cannot figure this out for the life of me. I'm a bit of a noob at linux, so I thought maybe you could help me out.

I am running puppy linux on a Dell Inspiron 5100 from a usb flash drive.

I need to bridge the ethernet connection and the wireless card. Also, I need to be able to set up an ad-hoc network so that users can connect to the machine for internet (using it like an access point.)

I have downloaded bridge-utils and i can't seem to make it work. also having trouble with the wireless ad-hoc. 

please consider that i'm not very well versed in linux (this setup is out of necessity for the moment) when replying. thanks a bunch! : )


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## shawkins (Oct 28, 2009)

Have you seen this document? It's a pretty good intro.

Can you give some more specifics of the commands you're trying and any error messages?


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## SquintRingo (Aug 20, 2008)

Here is a more specific description of the setup

I have a machine running puppy linux 4.3.1 that is connected to my router via ethernet. It gets internet just fine. It also has a wireless network card I'd like to use as an access point to the router.

The article you posted went way over my head... I'm trying to understand these scripts but im having trouble doing so.

my efforts so far have been limited to using the puppy package manager to download bridge-utils, and in the console typing 

brctl addbr <bridgename>

to which it replies package not installed.

Honestly I do not even know how to properly install a program, however, I'm under the impression if i get the correct .sfs file and place it in the root, if i reboot the computer the puppy startup will load it automatically.. ?

sorry for my poor level of knowledge, i normally work on a windows machine, and its obviously a lot different. :4-dontkno


EDIT: also, towards the ad-hoc network end, i've tried this and failed.

in the console,

iwconfig wlan0 essid TEST mode master

or substitute master with ad-hoc
i dont know what to do at this point. i tried checking other laptops to see if the TEST network was being broadcast, but no luck.


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## shawkins (Oct 28, 2009)

SquintRingo said:


> Here is a more specific description of the setup
> 
> I have a machine running puppy linux 4.3.1 that is connected to my router via ethernet. It gets internet just fine. It also has a wireless network card I'd like to use as an access point to the router.


Is the wireless card working? If you unplug the ethernet cable can you get anywhere?



SquintRingo said:


> The article you posted went way over my head... I'm trying to understand these scripts but im having trouble doing so.





SquintRingo said:


> my efforts so far have been limited to using the puppy package manager to download bridge-utils, and in the console typing


It sounds like the package got downloaded but not installed. That's the first thing to take care of. I've never used puppy linux, but this link should help you get the bridge package installed. Looks like there's a "Download and Install" option; probably you just hit "Download" (???)



SquintRingo said:


> Honestly I do not even know how to properly install a program, however, I'm under the impression if i get the correct .sfs file and place it in the root, if i reboot the computer the puppy startup will load it automatically.. ?


Again, I'm even newer to puppy than you are, but it looks like a two-phase process.

EDIT: One thing to be aware of is that a lot of times you can't install packages without installing their dependent packages. If puppy asks you something along the lines of "do you want to download and install the dependencies as well?" the answer is yes.



SquintRingo said:


> sorry for my poor level of knowledge, i normally work on a windows machine, and its obviously a lot different. :4-dontkno


NP. My ignorance of windows is broad & deep. 



SquintRingo said:


> EDIT: also, towards the ad-hoc network end, *i've tried this and failed.*in the console,
> 
> iwconfig wlan0 essid TEST mode master
> 
> ...


Failed how? Can you copy/paste the error message?

Also, can you run these commands and post the output?

1. netstat -nr
2. ifconfig
3. iwconfig


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## SquintRingo (Aug 20, 2008)

Alright first off the things you requested:

netstat -nr returns:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.240 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

ifconfig:


eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:56:34:52:93 
inet addr:192.168.1.2 Bcast:192.168.1.15 Mask:255.255.255.240
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:7465 errors:266 dropped:119 overruns:0 frame:48
TX packets:4184 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
RX bytes:4955262 (4.7 MiB) TX bytes:769938 (751.8 KiB)
Interrupt:7 

lo Link encap:Local Loopback 
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)


iwconfig:
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"test" 
Mode:Ad-Hoc Frequency:2.412 GHz Cell: Not-Associated 
Tx-Power=27 dBm 
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0



when i type "iwconfig wlan0 essid "test" mode master" it returns:

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

when doing the same thing with ad-hoc replacing master, it returns nothing (success?) although i do not see any the TEST network being picked up by any other wireless devices i have.

as for installing, i followed that page exactly, it checked and said i had no missing dependencies and it also lists it in the installed packages window. blctr still says that the package is not installed, only when i try to add a bridge. just typing blctr brings up a menu of available commands as if it were installed.

is there a way to manually install something? i know that there is and its probably above my head but i think i could manage it, all online guides i've check tell me to add code to places, but i dont know what they are referring to.. add codes to files? create new files in these directories with the code? what file extension do i use? sorry these are vague and probably unanswerable questions.

again thanks for your help with this tedious, i'm sure, work.


EDIT: also, yes the wireless card does work. Sorry about the mess with those returned values... the forum cuts out the extraneous spaces between the values making them easy to read. i tried to fix it to no success.


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## shawkins (Oct 28, 2009)

SquintRingo said:


> Alright first off the things you requested:
> 
> netstat -nr returns:
> 
> ...


Hey SquintRingo,

Sorry about the delay getting back to you; got a crisis at the day job at the moment so I'm going to have to keep this brief. Haven't forgotten you though.



SquintRingo said:


> when doing the same thing with ad-hoc replacing master, it returns nothing (success?) although i do not see any the TEST network being picked up by any other wireless devices i have.
> 
> as for installing, i followed that page exactly, it checked and said i had no missing dependencies and it also lists it in the installed packages window.


Sounds right.



SquintRingo said:


> blctr still says that the package is not installed, only when i try to add a bridge. just typing blctr brings up a menu of available commands as if it were installed.


OK, that's weird. Maybe it's looking for config files that you haven't created, or it can't find, or it can't read? Are you doing this as root user? If not, try doing it as root & see if you get the same error.



SquintRingo said:


> is there a way to manually install something?


Yes, you can download the source code and build it on the local machine yourself. That might actually be the easiest thing to try at this point. 

1. Go download the file containing the source code to your linux box. The 1.4 version of bridge-utils is available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bri...ge-utils-1.4/bridge-utils-1.4.tar.gz/download

These directions assume you're using the distribution file from the link above or one like it. If so, you ought to be able to just copy+paste the commands below. If that doesn't work, here's a link for the automake portions of the process (steps 5, 6, 7)

2. gunzip bridge-utils-1.4.tar.gz 
3. tar -xvf bridge-utils-1.4.tar 
4. cd bridge-utils-1.4
5. aclocal 
6. autoconf
7. ./configure
8. make
9. make install



SquintRingo said:


> i know that there is and its probably above my head but i think i could manage it, all online guides i've check tell me to add code to places, but i dont know what they are referring to.. add codes to files? create new files in these directories with the code? what file extension do i use? sorry these are vague and probably unanswerable questions.
> 
> again thanks for your help with this tedious, i'm sure, work.





SquintRingo said:


> EDIT: also, yes the wireless card does work. Sorry about the mess with those returned values... the forum cuts out the extraneous spaces between the values making them easy to read. i tried to fix it to no success.


It looks like it's working in ad-hoc but not master mode. I'm guessing that's a configuration issue, but I don't know exactly what off the top of my head.

I'll be back.


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## SquintRingo (Aug 20, 2008)

Don't worry about taking your time, haha im grateful for anything. I'll go try those steps now, and edit this post with the results.


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