YDL [not OSX] with linksys wireless router?? [long rant -- sorry!]

[Beartooth]

On 26 Mar 2003 23:43:13 -0500, on yellowdog-general (digest, Vol 1
#729), "Tony K." <nebenkabon@charter.net> wrote inter alia :

> I have a Linksys Wireless Access Point Router (802.11b), Model
> #BEFW11S4, and basic functionality works fine with my iBook (600MHz)
> YDL2.3 and airport card and my Red Hat desktop.

/rant on/

	I'm not beginning to get my question across, alas! 

	TonyK says it can be done, and that's encouraging. But (as I
obviously should have said at first) I've been fighting with this thing
(along with several other people) for a couple of months.

	The rest of what he says is either stuff I know to the point
where I use it in my sleep -- to curse with -- or else it has only to do
with Apple, at least apparently. The transfer to YDL may be obvious to
the meanest intelligence, but not to mine.

	Catch-up (background I should've given):

	I'm in process of moving. I *had* both OSX *and* YDL connecting
to DSL just fine, with an Apple wireless hub, at the old house. Now I'm
stuck with this never to be sufficiently to be execrated piece of
Linksys -- which finally turns out, after a $200 bill for diagnosing it
 (not repairing it!) to have two dead ports out of four.

	Not quite all of the grief is Linksys's fault -- the desktop
which I also want it to work with turned out to have a defunct ethernet
card -- which had worked fine with the apple hub. That confused things.

	But the iBook works fine; and I bought the Linksys here, and
can't have damaged it in moving. Besides, the dead ports are the middle
two, the ones least exposed to mishap.

	Anyway, the linksys tech I called stayed on the line as long as
I wanted, and worked hard the whole time -- but he'd never *seen* OSX
(which linksys claims to support), and couldn't even make OSX connect. I
finally let him go because I felt sorry for him -- and eventually got
help from a friend online, who desn't know linksys, but does know apples
-- and the Net.

	All that took most of two months, off & on -- all my time, 
whenever I spent a few days at this end.

Present situation :

	I now have the iBook connecting with OSX wirelessly through the
Linksys. Only with OSX (where I can never find anything! It drives me
crazy.), *not* with YDL. I want to make YDL connect, and then download
3.0, and upgrade.

	But the website Tony named is for the Apple hub! Maybe all the
rest of you know enough to find translating that into linksysese trivial
-- but I can't begin to do it at all. (I said that, didn't I? I may yet 
scream it ... <wry grin>)

	The friend got OSX to connect, as I say (with a couple of *long*
phone calls). But even now, with the linksys configured to a
fate-thee-well (SSID, password, and all!), when I reboot to YDL, it
won't connect. Not even to http://192.168.1.1. Nor will it ask my ID and 
password when I try -- though it does both on the RH 8.0 desktop,

	On login, I get some sort of failure message about
/btth/home/.DCOPserver_localhost.localdomain__0 -- and yes that's a
double underline mark just at the end. It says to make sure the DCOP
server is running -- and nothing in the GUI even seems to point near any
way to start *or* reconfigure it; I've even combed through the KDE
menus.

	When I su to root and do cd /home/btth and then ls -a, sure 
enough, there is a file named .DCOPserver_localhost.localdomain__0 -- 
and file .DCOPserver_localhost.localdomain__0 tells me it's plain ascii 
text. So I pico it (only editor I know, alas!): its content is 

local/localhost.localdomain:/tmp/.ICE-unix/dcop1193-10487791751193

which tells me zilch to the square root of minus one.

	Nothing on the ydl nor terrasoft websites talks about linksys,
afaict -- and I can hardly blame them.

	It's very odd: Linksys has a good reputation in Northern 
Virginia (which I have just left), but an abysmal one in Western 
Virginia (where I am now) -- and also in Southern California, 
apparently, according to a friend there whom I talked with last night.

	In fact, the contrast is startling. I ignored it at first,
because I couldn't credit it; but now I'm so disgusted with *my* linksys
that today I grabbed a Network Everywhere brand router, model NWR04B,
which appears to be the same design as the linksys except for having a
metal case and only one rabbit ear. I haven't broken the shrinkwrap yet
-- but could it possibly be any worse? Or enough different to be *more*
trouble than one with half its ports dead? Anybody know?

	I'd like to trans-plug every wire & cable from the linksys to
the NW, and just take the linksys to the rifle range, along with my old
W98 drive of evil memory ...

	At this point, I'd be glad of *any* way to get connected and 
download 3.0! (Short of using something from Microsoft, of course.)

/rant off/
-- 
Beartooth the Stubborn <karhunhammas (at) lserv.com>
Double Retiree, Neo-Redneck, Linuxer's Apprentice
RH 7.2 & 8, YDL 2.3, OSX; Pine 4.43; Privoxy 3.0.0
Phoenix 0.5, Opera 6.11, Galeon 1.2.5; Pan 0.11.4 & 13.9