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Configure Airport Under SuSE 7.3 PPC by Michael Coyle

"Ease of Use" under Linux on the desktop has come more of a reality with the SuSE 7.3 distribution. This simple HOW-TO for configuring an Airport card assumes you are familiar with networking under Linux and just need a little help with wireless networking.

The hardest part of the configuration is making sure your kernel has the correct airport module. Not sure about yours? Feel free to download mine. It was built on my Ti Powerbook from the BenH rsync from 6/5/02 and should work on an iBook too.

As SuperUser launch yast2, the SuSE GUI configuration tool. Under the Network options, select "Network card configuration". Select the Interface radio button and click Add.

If it's not set already, make the device Ethernet with a number of 1. Enter the kernel module of airport. The network_name was assigned to your Airport Base Station when you configured it under MacOS. In my example, it's WLAN. When done, click the Next button.

Under Network address setup, chose the type of network you run. My network uses assigned IP addresses. Be sure to use a different IP then the internal eth0 card. If they were already entered under eth0, the gateway and DNS should already be assigned, but check them just to make sure.

When finished, the Interface should look similar to mine below. Two cards with two dives and different IP addresses.

Selecting the Hardware radio button will confirm your configuration.

The cards are setup, but here is the remaining dilemma How does your IP configuration know which card to route packet to? Unfortunately, the only way I know of is to modify the file /etc/route.config. Open this file in a text editor. It lists the default gateway IP and which card to 'connect' to it. In the example below, IP will be routed to the Airport card (eth1).

default 10.201.35.1 0.0.0.0 eth1

Now all that is left to do is open a terminal and run the command:

sudo /sbin/route

If you want to switch to a wired network, change route.config to eth0 and re-run /sbin/route. Once configured, the network settings are retained, even after a reboot.