Network Starter Pack

[roberts]

The goal for starter packs is basically one time use and not a kludge replacement for proper maintainable extensions.

For example installing. Hopefully your are not installing your system often.
But when you want to install, you load a starter. It loads to ram. You perform the install. Reboot.
The starter pack is no longer needed and not taking any ram resources.

I am hoping the same will be true for the network starter pack. My goal is build a knowledge base, based on prior community experience, and distill out only what the user needs to achieve a working net/wifi. I have already begun on this adventure.  Developing....

[coreplayer]

I used the network starterpak on two notebooks recently,  the installation on the newer model was successful whilst  the older notebook was not anywhere near as successful do the the lack of wireless drivers, although the starterpack did help with the wired network which allowed download of Ndiswrapper extension.

[roberts]

I am just getting started to look at this starter pack. I have a nearly complete 'ab' style wifi tool.

At least with v3.7 and network starter pack you can now directly access the ndiswrapper device driver from XP.

Scenario. Windows XP with working wifi. Tiny Core boot with no network.
From Windows download network.gz starter pack.
Boot Tiny Core v3.7. Use mount tool to mount Windows drive( typically hda1).
Use Control Panel to navigate to and load Starter Pack, network.gz, from Windows.

Open xterm, become root.
$ sudo -s
# ndiswrapper -i /mnt/hda1/Documents\ and\ Settings/user/My\ Documents/Downloads/ma111sw_driver_v1.1/winXp/NETMA111.INF
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# wifi.sh

Select AP from list, enter password if required.

(wifi.sh coming soon).

[bmarkus]

Select AP from list, enter password if required.

(wifi.sh coming soon).

Is WPA/WPA2 supported?

[roberts]

WEP completed, WPA/WPA2 in process.

[yoshi314]

some sane CLI way to handle gsm modems would also be nice. but i think that's something that can be postponed for now.

[roberts]

Sorry, I have no access to gsm or 3g/4g modems. As it is I have very limited access to WPA/WPA2.
However, much progress to report on the wifi tool.  I hope to release it as part of the 3.7 & starter packs release.
 

[yoshi314]

it's similar here. i've briefly had a gsm modem.

and it's pretty sad that gsm stuff can be clicked through with network manager, but cli leaves a LOT to be desired.

[gutmensch]

What I liked when using a UMTS/3G device was this 200K script http://www.sakis3g.org/. It's a standalone file, which unpacks on the fly - and it worked far better than the typical NetworkManager PITA, which requires lots of deps but lacks stability. Unfortunately I don't have a 3G device right now to test it on tinycore, but maybe another one jumps in here...

[curaga]

What I liked in most of them is how they are just modems, no need for complex apps or scripts at all. I used a Nokia EDGE modem some years ago, it was just a few lines of PPP config and online.

[roberts]

No 3g stuff. But I am in final testing of my wifi.sh, an 'ab' style wifi manager.

It is only 4k supports WEP/WPA/WPA2, with select list of available APs, database of remembered connections, and auto connect on home network.

[roberts]

Reposted network.gz starter pack. Includes wifi.sh, a tiny 'ab' style wifi mgr.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/3.x/starterpacks/

[netnomad]

hi gutmensch,

although i succeeded in using a 3g-modem on a manual way, the sakis3g-script didn't work for me.
i guess that there are still some unresolved dependencies...
unfortunately there are no messages that give a hint...

in the moment i install the needed tc-packages, copy the config-files to /etc, transfer the pin to the modem and finally i start the connection. all these steps i've written in very, very basic "scripts", but it works.

[gutmensch]

@netnomad: Did you try running the script like

Code: [Select]

sudo ./sakis3g --debug
? As far as I can see it's a huge shell script, which can use zenity for user interaction, but there's also a command line mode, so you don't need any graphical tools at all.

[curaga]

@Robert

Is network.gz the right place for wifi.sh? If the starter packs are only meant to be used on the initial setup, the script would be nowhere to be seen after transitioning to proper extensions.