The first critical step is to ensure that your wireless device is recognized by your system. There are a variety of methods to verify that your system did this successfully. Here are some methods:
- The “dmesg” command can quite often contain detailed messages indicating that the wireless devices was properly detected.
- If the card is an ISA card, you are usually out of luck.
- If the card is a PCI card (miniPCI/miniPCI Express/PCI Express), you need to use the command “lspci” to display the card identification strings.
- If the hardware is a USB dongle, you need to use the command “lsusb” to display the dongle identification strings. In some case, “lsusb” doesn't work (for example if usbfs is not mounted), and you can get the identification strings from the kernel log using “dmesg” (or in /var/log/messages).
- If the card is a Cardbus card (32 bits PCMCIA), and if you are using kernel 2.6.X or kernel 2.4.X with the kernel PCMCIA subsystem, you need to use the command “lspci” to display the card identification strings. If the card is a Cardbus card (32 bits PCMCIA), and if you are using an older kernel with the standalone PCMCIA subsystem, you need to use the command “cardctl ident” display the card identification strings. Try both and see what comes out.
- If the card is a true PCMCIA card (16 bits), and if you are using kernel 2.6.14 or later, you need to use the command “pccardctl ident” to display the card identification strings. If the card is a true PCMCIA card (16 bits), and if you are using an older kernel, you need to use the command “cardctl ident” display the card identification strings. Note that cardmgr will also write some identification strings in the message logs (/var/log/daemon.log) that may be different from the real card identification strings. Usually 16bit PCMCIA cards can be easily identified by the sticker on the bottom of the card with tick boxes or information indicating its a 5V card.
Needless to say, if your wireless device is not detected by your system, you will have to investigate and correct the problem.