How to get and install WiFi using dial-up

[tom]

I'm using TC Linux 3.2 and am wondering how I can download
WiFi using another computer and dial-up. Unfortunately I can use
dail-up and WiFi only.

Tom.

[Juanito]

It can be done, but first it would be good to know what wifi hardware you have (manufacturer, chipset) in order to be able to give advice on what exactly would be needed.

If you're not sure of your hardware, you can download the following and copy them over to your tc machine to help locate things using either "lspci" or "lsusb", depending on whether you have pci or usb hardware:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/tcz/pci-utils.tcz
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/tcz/libpci.tcz

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/tcz/usb-utils.tcz
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/tcz/libusb.tcz

[tom]

That was quick.

I'm using the ASUS eeePC 701 with an Atheros chipset. I load from the built-in
SDC-cardreader using grub - no problems there.

Tom.

[Juanito]

Have a look at this: http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=6776.msg35619#msg35619

If you're lucky, you should just need:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/tcz/wireless-2.6.33.3-tinycore.tcz
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/tcz/wireless_tools.tcz

[tom]

Thanks, have just downloaded the two files using Slackware. I'll have to spend a bit
of time now to put them into Tinycorelinux 3.2

Tom.

[tom]

Thanks, Juanito.

The two wireless downloads you mentioned seem to work.
I'll test them today, to a degree, as I still need a webbrowser
to log into the public WiFi-network at our library (New Zealand).

Which webbrowser is really small? Is there any such thing as 'retawq'
(no dynamically linked libraries)?

Tom.

[tom]

WiFi worked: got a lease and pinged the server (10.10.10.1). Unfortunately I haven't got
a browser yet.

Any suggestions as far as a very frugal browser's concerned? Once I can use it
to download stuff I'll probably get a better one.

Does the AppManager use port 80 or 443? I hope so, other ports are blocked at the
Library.

Tom

[Juanito]

It's not that small, but now you have a wifi connection you could use the appbrowser to download the opera browser (8MB)

[maro]

'appbrowser' uses a script called 'tce-load', which itself uses Busybox 'wget'. It then depends on the mirror your are using, so for HTTP it's port 80 and for FTP it's 21. No port 443 AFAIK.

My simple test for HTTP connectivity is to try wget http://example.com

The most primitive "browser" would be 'wget', but that's a bit of a struggle to "read" a web page (e.g. via 'less'). I think the conclusion in this forum is that Opera 9.64 (i.e. the 'opera.tcz' extension) is the "smallest" of the "complete" options.

There are smaller ones (e.g. 'chimera2.tcz' or 'dillo.tcz') or text-only candidates, (e.g. 'links-cli.tcz') but with most of them you will struggle to login to this forum here. There was a thread not that long ago, where this question was raised. IIRC I could not work it out myself (i.e. how to use 'links' for that purpose).

[tom]

Thanks. Maro. I'll have another go today using dillo2 (no dependencies). Once I'm connected, the system
automatically goes into a webbrowser where I have to click 'Agree'. After that I can do what I want,
except for sending emails (port 25), telnet (port 23) and ssh (port 22).

The above restrictions apparently apply not only to free WiFi-systems. Maybe I'll have to go back to
dial-up, if that's available on Tinycore 3.2 at all?

Tom.

[tom]

Success!

It all works, on the eeePC 701 using WiFi and on my Desktop using dial-up.

All I need to do now is think about how to save stuff.

Thanks for the help/encouragement. I'm so glad to have an ebook-reader now that just loads
and reads..

Tom.

[tinypoodle]

There was a thread not that long ago, where this question was raised. IIRC I could not work it out myself (i.e. how to use 'links' for that purpose).

Feel free to elaborate further about in that thread, e.g. more specifically about issues with links.

[tom]

I'm using 'links-cli', not 'links' and not 'elinks'. The latter two seem to depend on framebuffer.

Dial-up's a bit tricky: I still need to copy 'resolv.conf' from /etc/ppp to /etc once the connection's
up and running, or the DNS-system won't work.

If you work outside X to get a bit more speed, you can put 'ppp-go' in the background (Ctrl+Z)
and then run 'links-cli'. 'fg' brings it back to the foreground and you stop it using Ctrl+C.

Things work really well in TC, thanks for such a good system,

Tom.

[tinypoodle]

I'm using 'links-cli', not 'links' and not 'elinks'. The latter two seem to depend on framebuffer.

links(2) depends on framebuffer for being run in graphical mode on console (links -g).

I couldn't think of a reason it would not run without framebuffer in text mode.

Personally I would always boot to framebuffer in any distro if possible, so no real experience there.

Have you tried links and elinks on console without framebuffer? If yes, what exactly is the outcome?

[tom]

I haven't tried elinks and links after I found that links-cli works fine.

Will do that a bit later and post the results.

So far all is going well on the eeePC: mplayer, ossxmix (to turn up volume to max on the tiny beast),
ssh, fbreader. The latter is quite a bit faster than fbreader under Ubuntu 10.4 - a whale
of a program. Often I just want to READ a book. Sometimes I like the newspaper to get gathered
and massaged into an epub-file, but that's not happening all that much. Nice to have under
Ubuntu on an eeePC (no noise if it runs at night).

Tom.