I want to be able to hook up a wireless access point to my computer, (which is in turn plugged into an ethernet hub, with a second NIC card installed) so that I can use my laptop wirelessly from the access point. I have it hooked up and it works in Windows, but what all do I need to do to make it work in Linux (Ubuntu)?
Let me get this straight. You have a hub that's connected to your Internet connection (I'm assuming broadband). Off this hub you have hanging a WAP. You can connect from your laptop via wireless to the WAP in Windows and now want to be able to connect to the WAP within linux. Am I right so far?
The next thing to determine is what your wifi card is. If your wifi card is PCMCIA, then you can just look at it. If it's an internal card, you can do this using lspci. See my response to your video card question for infomration on how to use lspci. This time, you are looking for something like "Ethernet controller" of "Wireless network controller", basically anything that looks like it's your wifi card.
Depending on the card, there may be native linux kernel drivers available. If so, then you just need to find out which one to use. However, Ubuntu should figure this out and load it automatically. If they're not available, then you'll probably need to use ndiswrapper which lets you use Windows drivers in linux. see my post <a href="http://www.k-slug.org/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=34&page=1">here</a> for a link to another page on setting up ndiswrapper.
Feel free to post back here if you have further questions.
Good advice, but not quite what I needed. I re-read my question, and I see how I was somewhat ambiguous... I hav a WAP which is plugged into my desktop computer via secondary NIC card. The primary ethernet controller is plugged into a hub, which is connected directly to a broadband ethernet connection. I don't know all the technical info behind how it works, but I use my computer as a "base station", and my WAP runs off of my computer. It works in Windows XP, but I want to be able to run Linux on my desktop computer, and still have my WAP function properly, so I can connect my laptop to wireless internet.
OK, I read you now. For the record, plugging in a whole WAP is a bit overkill. You can achieve the same results just by putting a wifi card in your desktop box and have it perform the duties that the WAP does. So with your configuration, the desktop plugs into your internet connection, and the second NIC is bridged to redirect traffic to and from your WAP, which handles the authentication and IP address assignement for your wireless LAN segment. That's fine, we can work with that. Obviously, the setup will work, as you can do it in Windows, we just need to get it duplicated in linux.
I'm not an expert in this, so somebody else will have to chime in, but I can give you the basics of what need to be done. Essentially, you need to configure your desktop box to be a router in linux. This subject has been covered quite well elsewhere by people much smarter than me. Here's a good guide to help you get started: <a href="http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/2100/1/">Linux Networking: Using Ipchains</a>. It's a little old, but it should give you a better idea of the concepts you need to get it working. It should also help you find more recent information once you know what to look for. Anybody who's done this recently here should feel free to chime in.
I went to the site, and read up on how to use the ipchains program. But when I go to try it out, I get a message saying that it is not compatible with the kernel. Any ideas??
I've found that I can use the program iptables in place of ipchains. Is anyone familiar with using this program that might be able to give me a few pointers on how to get started?