[SOLVED] BSNL Broadband over PPPoE in ACER Aspire 5738 :) on Ubuntu & Windows

Well for a few days I'm at home and this awesome 256Kbps (upto 2 Mbps) line was introduced to me. I even downloaded some "stuff" via Torrents, FTP. Awesome download speed (Whole 700Mb in 50mins. That's news!)!! And of course, there always is this strong urge to fix things!

Connecting from Windows XP via Wireless Anyway the drivers which came along with the ACER Utility/Resource disk couldn't get my wifi running (I knew the Card was okay as it worked just great in Ubuntu). I tried to download every possible driver matching the product name... Even those for Windows7 sometimes :P [all futile attempts]...
Atheros, RALink, Intel, ShirPeak... but nothing worked. I gave up (anyway.. almost all of my time Ubuntu is the sole OS I use, so that didn't bother me much).

Here at the starting the 'pppoeconf' [see the section below] wasn't working right. So had to switch on my Windows for a go. You know what...!!! I even forgot the password..!! [had to resort to FingerPrint Access :P Cool! Futuristic!].. anyway.. I changed it from the Administrator Account later.

I searched online for tools which can update my Drivers and find those for the 'unknown' ones. I found a few links... like:

DriverMax: Sucked Bigtime.. MaxTime. It wanted to force me to make an account before even using it and connect online. Bloody... I wanted a wifi driver :P You know, this has been a major paradox... "To Connect to the Internet you need to download a package from the Internet itself" [Linux users.. ever heard of ndiswrapper?]. It got uninstalled in seconds.

UKD: (probable short for UnKnownDevices) It's hosted at HalfDone.org. Elegent GUI did the trick and showed me some info about the NetworkController:

* Windows Description - Network Controller
* Hardware ID - VEN_8086&DEV_0083&SUBSYS_13058086&REV_00
* Device Category (Class) - Other devices
* Enumerator - PCI
* Detected Chip Vender - Intel Corporation
* Detected Chip Device -
* Detected Vender - Intel Corporation
* Detected Device -
* Device Status Flags - Detected, Unknown, Present, Not Phantom, Category Visable

I copy pasted the entire string in Google and on that page (it wasn't in EN btw) there were some links I sporadically clicked and reached a page which said its "Intel WiFi Link 1000 Driver 12.5.0.57 REV:A". Bingo!

DriverRobot: in the mean time I was working on this thing [Multi-Processing you know]. DriverRobot is FREE etc and after the full analysis wanted to go Online to show the possible updates available for the entire computer, but the best part: it allowed me to save the probe as an HTML page and when I opened it under a working Internet connection, it gave me the same Driver Name, Wireless_LAN_Intel_12.5.0.57 [192.4Mb download].













192.4Mb... Oh! Come on. I searched and downloaded the HP driver sp44954.exe (3.5Mb).
Works Great.

Rest is all a cakewalk. PPPoE id/password and you are thru.


Connecting from Ubuntu Via Wireless Ubuntu saves me of the trouble to download and install Driver. Wouldn't it be amazing if all the drivers come bundled along with the OS itself. Linux totally nails it... in this regard (ting).

Well just now I managed to configure Internet thru BSNL-Broadband in my Ubuntu as well. Connect to the access point, you get an IP-address using DHCP. Now you need to use the 'pppoeconf' program.

$ sudo pppoeconf
[sudo] password for user:

and it shows you a nice decent GUI. Go thru all the recommended settings and its done. And starts the connection instantly.
Just make sure you Press "NO" on this page.

You can check the IP etc using 'ifconfig'.

$ sudo ifconfig ppp0

and you see iNet addr, and P-t-P. All's good.
Later you can use 'pon dsl-provider' and 'poff' to toggle PPPoE status.
Good thing right? :)

Well the best part that now I can resume the downloads in Vuze.
Its 24's-Craze coming up!


Update:
Well I restarted the system only to find out that neither the DSL pppoeconf is working nor is my system connected to wifi. So I tinkered a bit a found out... the 'pppoeconf' makes an entry in the /etc/network/interfaces and then the NetworkManager stop managing the Wifi (it says: Device not managed). Either you can delete/comment all the lines from /etc/network/interfaces other than the two lines containing 'lo' [using 'gksu'].... *
Using gksu, you can open an application in root mode. (Think: su)
Press ALT+F2 >> Enter 'gksu gedit' >> open the file (interfaces) now and make changes.

Connect to the preferred accesspoint (after probably a restart) and 'pppoeconf' again.
But its not worth it.

* or.... you can yourself make a shell script to make that happen.

sudo iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid "ncryption"
dhclient wlan0
pon dsl-provider

:) instead of "ncryption", enter your essid (with/without the quotes).
you can later check 'sudo plog' to see if it says something like this:

local IP address
IP address
primary DNS address
secondary DNS address

Happy Tweaking. Ciao.