[GTALUG] DSL to wifi

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Astrid R via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

To actually solve your problem, we need to know more about:

- whether you know what your modem/router's WiFi password OR
  if you can set it to a new password

- more details about how your computer's OS lets you set the WiFi 
  password.  My best guess is that you can click on the top right
  of your screen and get access to wireless settings (using
  Gnome's Network Manager).  But I don't know and your video doesn't
  make this clear.

Warning: this rest of this reply is perhaps longer than you might want to 
read.  Also, it won't solve your problem.  But it might help you 
understand what I wrote above.

| Thanks for your replies. Before I go on I should say I discovered that I 
| no longer have the password to change the date and time, so it might not 
| be possible to change anything else either.

There are three kinds of password that you might be talking about.

1. the notebook's BIOS setup screen (you get into that before the Linux 
has booted).  This lets you set the date and time, and a number of other 
things that you probably need not change.  Normally you don't need a 
password for this, but if someone has set the BIOS password, you will have 
to use it.

2. The password for the Linux "super user" or "root" (two names for
the same thing).

3. The password for the your identity on the machine.  Normally you have 
to type this in at every login, but you've set things up so that you are 
automatically logged in when you start the machine.

Depending on the version of Linux you are using, (3) might be enough.
(2) is certainly enough.  With (2), you can even set (3).

Do you know which password(s) you don't know?

| But in case there might be a way, I hope the following is useful.
| 
| I'm using a Dell laptop.
| 
| Not sure if this is the distribution and release...GNU Grub 1.99-27 +deb 7u2...

(This may not be useful to you but it should be useful to others
helping you.)

debian Wheezy, with a kernel version 3.2.0-4-486.
	<https://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/>

(I personally don't know debian Wheezy.  So someone who does know it
can give you more useful help.)

- your OS was installed perhaps five to seven years ago

- you haven't done updates recently.  Maybe never.

- you cannot do updates any longer since Wheezy was only supported until 
  May 2018.  You could update to a later debian but that is more
  complicated.

- your computer may be old enough that it might not have enough
  resources to comfortably run a newer OS release.

| Using wifi at home.
| 
| I don't have DSL anymore, nor the modem or router I used when I did have 
| it (I was using an ethernet cable) and I now have a different ISP (for 
| the wifi): rogers. The rogers modem is called 'ignite'.

Almost all the time DSL internet is provided by a combined modem/router box.  The 
same is true of Cable internet.  So: in each case, you just connecting 
your computer to the box with an ethernet cable.  Nothing new is needed.  
No password, for example.

| I'm trying to 
| use rogers wifi at home on my laptop which only ever used DSL before. 
| I'm already using wifi at home on my phone.

For WiFi, things get a little more complicated.  The modem/router box 
needs to have a password for WiFi access and the computer needs to know 
the same one.  (That would have been true in your DSL setup too.)

How to think about the password problem:

Your modem/router and computer need to share a single WiFI password.
This is desgined to keep others out of your network.

For security reasons, the password should be long and hard to guess.

- if you don't know the WiFi password on the modem/router, you need to set 
  one.

- To set the WiFi password in the modem/router, you need to know another 
  password, the one to access the modem/router's setup web page

The technician who installed Your Rogers system might have left a
sheet of paper with passwords for the modem/router.

Similarly, on the computer side, there are two passwords involved:

- if you don't know the WiFi password on the computer, you need to set
  one.  There have been many techniques over the years.  I don't know
  how Wheezy did this.  Others have suggested that it might involve
  NetworkManager

- To set the WiFi password in the computer, you need to know another
  password, the one that has sufficient privilege to set the WiFi
  password.  It will be password (2) or (3) (as described at the start
  of this message).