Wishlist: Servers, WPA, Educational/Business Network...
Lots of Ideas from using Mepis at home:
1) A GUI way to configure WPA on a Ndiswrapper device. I don't have WEP enabled and never will. I had to go beyond the network control panel to get WPA working. But does work a dream. If i didnt have a network card as well, i would of been screwed
2) A server based version/install option for a directory service based server. I would like to replace Active Directory at work. Its amazing to think some people only think a server means running apache and mysql. An easy configurer for samba or NIS would be cool
3) Ways to show me how to make an image to be distributed to all pcs on a network, all pc's decent here, so local install needed. NFS for home directories needed and guidance appreciated
4) Central way to update mepis on workstations
5) A nice way to support use of kiosk from KDE so we can control what the users see and access on desktop, unless warren has something similar up his sleeve with biz-server when he releases it.
6) a configurer for dansguardian and squid, or similar, at install time, so that the server becomes a dedicated web filter solution and nothing un-neccesary installed.
I would gladly pay for a distro that can easily do the above, coming from a win 2003 network admin, it would have to be easy.
Thanks for reading
Alan
WPA report...
im going to do a fresh install of simply 3.3.1, so i'll document what i do to get it working and get back to you on.
WPA on Mepis
Heres how i did WPA on mepis 3.3.1
My Mepis was a clean install and i also use ndiswrapper, so just adapt it to your card. Atheros uses madwifi doesn't it?
1. If your card is all recognised, configure the ip, subnet, gateway and dns address in the OS control centre, im guessing this would be wlan0. Only configure the settings on the tab your card is on, iwconfig from the shell should show your card name.
2. if you don't have intrnet access from mepis, download the testing version of wpa_supplicant from packages.debian.org. If you do, use kpackage.
3. create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf in /etc/ use the below config.
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant # for wpa_cli support
network={
ssid="yourssidhere"
psk="yourwpakeyhere"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
}
4. goto /etc/default and edit wpasupplicant with the following changes below.
change ENABLED=0 to ENABLED=1
Change OPTIONS="-w" to
OPTIONS="-w -Dndiswrapper -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf"
if you are using madwifi change -Dndiswrapper above to -Dmadwifi
if your wireless device isn't shown as wlan0 in iwconfig, change -iwlan0 to what your wireless device is called: eg. -iath0
5. Reboot the pc and hopefully WPA should be working.
Let me know if it works.
Alan