I installed CentOS on my new Windows XP PC, having to resize the ntfs filesystem first to make space, with the intention of testing some open source postgres database replication software I was planning to use in my voluntary job. However, I stalled at ever doing this, maybe because there seemed to be too many variables outside my control.
Now with the space already partitioned, I decided to install a recent version of Suse Linux there instead. This went smoothly but it inevitably failed to recognise my USB wireless dongle. I eventually downloaded the right Ralink driver, and after installing the kernel source was able to compile it.
After some tinkering I was able to connect to my home wireless network. I added the DNS server address of the router in /etc/resolv.conf. To make it all load up at boot time I created a script in the /etc/init.d directory and inserted it to the startup sequence using 'chkconfig --add'.
#!/bin/sh# BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: rc.local
# Required-Start: $network $syslog
# Required-Stop: $network $syslog
# Default-Start: 3 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 2 6
# Description: whatever
# END INIT INFO
cd /root
cd rtl8187_linux_26.1025.0328.2007
./wlan0up
iwconfig wlan0 essid Belkin_Pre-N_123456
iwconfig wlan0 key 12345678909876543212345678
./wlan0dhcp
I am happy that I got it working, and it all seems quite robust and resposive.
