OpenSUSE Wireless :: Creating The Initial Wireless Connection?

There seem to be a number of people that believe the junk that NetworkManager is buggy.As I believe the opposite, I want to offer more detailed instructions on how to create the initial connection, and how to troubleshoot the process. Once readers of this group have commented on this draft, I plan to ask the moderators to make it a sticky.

This description will be specific to the KDE desktop. The steps will be similar for Gnome, but the details may be different.

Step 1: Do you have a Network Manager applet in the system tray? If not, use YaST =>
Network Devices => Network Settings. Under the "Global Options" tab, click on the "User Controlled with Network Manager" button. If it is already set, you will get a warning box when "Network Settings" starts.

Step 2: Now you should see the NM applet. Click on it and check the popup. If the "Enable Wireless" checkbox is inactive (gray), there are several possibilities: (1) Your wireless device driver is not loaded, (2) the necessary firmware is not available, or (3) an rfkill switch/button is wrong. For (1), check "hwinfo --network" and check the "Driver" line. If it is blank, then you need to run the command "/sbin/lspci -nn" if the device is connected to a PCI bus, or "lsusb" if a USB device. Post the results on the Wireless forum. For (2), look at the output of "dmesg | grep firmware", which will list the name of the file(s) to be loaded.

For Broadcom devices that use either b43 or b43legacy, the firmware is obtained by using the command "/usr/sbin/install_b43xx_firmware". You will need a wired connection to complete this step. For (3), you will also need a wired connection and install the
"rfkill" package using the command "sudo zypper in rfkill". The interrogate the current settings with "/usr/sbin/rfkill list". If any device is "Hard blocked", then wireless will be disabled.

Step 3: Once the "Enable Wireless" checkbox is active, check it and click on "Manage
Connections". Choose the Wireless tab and click on Add. Enter the name for this connection. You will probably want to check the "Connect Automatically" box. Next click on the Scan button. If you do not see your Access Point (AP) in the map, you will not be able to get a connection. Click on the AP you want, and click OK. The (E)SSID should be in the SSID box. The other boxes on this screen should be OK as is. If you have several APs with the same SSID, but you wish to restrict the connection to only one of them, then you should enter its MAC address in the BSSID box.

This usage is rare. Next click on the "Wireless Security" tab and enter any encryption secrets. The correct type should have been selected. For WEP encryption, you will need to use the hex key, not a passphrase. Once this is complete, click OK to close this screen, and the configure screen. During this process, a popup should appear offering to use a
wallet to store the connection secret. If you use a password on this wallet, you will need to enter that password each time you log in. If you set no password on the wallet, the security level is lowered, but entering a password is avoided.

Step 4: At this point, you will need to disconnect the wire. Whenever the computer can make a hard-wired connection, it will supersede any wireless option. The wireless connection should then occur automatically.