Introduction
One of the most commonly asked question on Matriux forums and IRC is how to enable and work with WiFi on a Matriux instance running inside VMWare or any other virtualization software. This tutorial will take you step by step on how to do that.
For this tutorial, I am running VMware® Workstation on a Windows 7 Enterprise N Edition which is my Host machine. The Matriux is (obviously) my guest operating system running “Krypton” v1.2. I am using a D-Link DWA-125 Wireless N 150 USB Adapter for this tutorial.
Procedure
There are so many methods and approaches to enable Wi-Fi inside VMWare / Virtualization environment. One of the preferred approaches is explained below:
- Note: Do not connect the Wireless Adapter now.
- Start Windows 7 (or your Host OS).
- Start VM Ware and boot Matriux.
- After you login and obtain an IP, if you execute ifconfig -a, by default you will see only two interfaces i.e., eth0 and lo.
8:22 [email protected](none) /root# ifconfig –a
eth0 Link encap:EthernetHWaddr
aa:00:04:00:0a:04
inet addr:192.168.116.130
Bcast:192.168.116.255
Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::a800:4ff:fe00:a04/64
Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500
Metric:1
RX packets:34 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:119 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4731 (4.6 KiB) TX bytes:11021
(10.7 KiB)
Interrupt:19 Base address:0x2000
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:6688 (6.5 KiB) TX bytes:6688
(6.5 KiB)
|
- Now Connect your USB WiFi Adapter to your PC / Laptop.
- If you get a Driver Software Installation error or information window (as shown below), click on the Close button to proceed.
Figure 1
- Now the USB Wifi device is available for VM.
- You can verify this by switching to VM and clicking on the menu VM -> Removable Devices.
- You can see the USB WiFi Device listed there as shown below:
Figure 2
- Also, if you move the mouse over the VM Status Bar USB icons, you can see the USB WiFi Device listed there (as shown below):
Figure 3
- • Click (or right-click) on the USB Wifi Icon on the VM and click on “Connect (Disconnect from Host)” as shown below:
Figure 4
- The following Message Window should appear. Click OK to proceed.
Figure 5
- • If you look at the VM Status bar, you can see that the USB WiFi Icon is now active and highlighted as shown below:
Figure 6
- Now your USB WiFi adapter is ready for your Matriux WM and you can verify the same using the ifconfig -a command. The output is displayed below:
8:52 [email protected](none) /root# ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:EthernetHWaddr
aa:00:04:00:0a:04
inet addr:192.168.116.130
Bcast:192.168.116.255
Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::a800:4ff:fe00:a04/64
Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST
MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:107 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:300 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:11883 (11.6 KiB) TX
bytes:20639 (20.1 KiB)
Interrupt:19 Base address:0x2000
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING
MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:6688 (6.5 KiB)
TX bytes:6688 (6.5 KiB)
wlan0 Link encap:EthernetHWaddr
f0:7d:68:62:b9:ab
BROADCAST MULTICAST
MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0
overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
|
Conclusion
The rest I leave it to your WiFi zeal. Now you can do all your WiFi experiments with Matriux from within your Virtual environment.
Join us for more discussion on Matriux and WiFi topics at http://forum.matriux.com or http://is-ra.org/forum/.
Happy Learning!
Reach us at:-
[email protected]
@matriuxtig3r
www.facebook.com/matriuxtig3r
Also if you are interested in supporting Matriux project as a Developer/Contributor or any other forms such as feedback you are welcome to write to us!