Re: Connection sharing

[Simon Schampijer <simon schampijer de>]

Bill Moseley wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 05:19:33PM -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-12-04 at 21:12 -0800, Bill Moseley wrote:
> > > I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 on a Thinkpad T60p w/ Atheros wireless.
> > madwifi or ath5k?  Only ath5k is supported, because madwifi isn't in the
> > upstream kernel.  NetworkManager only supports drivers that are shipped
> > in the official Linux kernel.  Since we cannot fix binary drivers, and
> > out-of-tree drivers are of questionable interoperability and quality,
> > they are not supported.
>
> I thought I was running madwifi, but according lsmod ath9k is loaded.
>
> > Is there a checkbox next to the wifi network you just created?  The icon
> > will show your *primary* internet connection, i.e. the one you are
> > sharing.  But the menu will also indicate the connection which is
> > sharing your primary connection.
>
> No check box -- a radio button, yes, if that's what you mean.
>
> > The sharing capability requires dnsmasq-base (on Ubuntu).
>
> Yes, installing that package was all it took. Very nice!
>
> To disable the ad-hoc network should I just select another wireless
> from the drop-down (or I guess I could just disable wireless all
> together).
>
> One thing that seems different since upgrading to 8.10 is that the
> wireless always connects even when on the wired LAN.  IIRC, before
> nm-applet would stop the wireless when I connected to the wired LAN.
> But, my memory might be wrong about that.
>
> > If you
> > install that, when you "create new wireless network", it will create an
> > Ad-Hoc wifi connection and will start dnsmasq as a forwarding nameserver
> > and DHCP server on that adhoc network.  Other computers that connect to
> > that adhoc network will then be able to get a DHCP address.
>
> I see.  So my Thinkpad is preforming NAT (it's address is 192.168. and
> the devices that connect to it (like my iBook) is 10.42.44.10,
>
>
>
> > *however*, since you state that other computers cannot see the newly
> > created adhoc sharing network, this either indicates that you don't have
> > dnsmasq installed, or it indicates driver problems.  I had to fix quite
> > a few upstream drivers along the way to get adhoc networking to work
> > correctly, and fix wpa_supplicant in a few cases.  These changes are in
> > released kernels (2.6.27 and later) and also in the latest
> > wpa_supplicant releases (0.6.5 and later).
>
> Thanks very much for you effort.  Very impressive how well these
> things work now.

Yup, does work great for me as well to share my wired connection, 
terrific work!

One thing I did not understand yet is, that once the second machine is 
connected I do not get any information about the signal strength anymore 
(it show up as being 0).

This is reflected in both machines in the nm-applet but as well if I 
check with iwconfig. When I do scanning with iwlist I get the signal 
strength information fine.

Any ideas what I miss here?

Thanks,
   Simon