Wireless networking setup

[Paul Hendrick]

On Fri, 2004-12-10 at 08:33 -0600, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> Mine worked perfectly the first time, and it sounds like you did the
> same thing. But just in case, here's what I did:
> 1) Installed ethernet & wireless cards
> 2) Installed ubuntu
> 3) The ethernet card was detected and activated
> 4) Added the ndiswrapper package using synaptic
> 5) Installed the broadcom driver for my linksys card:
>   sudo ndiswrapper -i /path/to/file/on/driver/cd.inf
> 6) added ndiswrapper to /etc/modules
> 7) because I wasn't ready to reboot I inserted the module in the running system 
>   sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
> 8) The wireless interface was selectable and I configured it using the
> networking tool.
> 

Yeah, I've taken those steps again and again, with no luck whatsoever.
no matter what i try, either using the network-admin tool, or manually
with iwconfig command, I cant get the device to enable.
The device in my /etc/network/interfaces is defined as:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
name Wireless LAN card
wireless_essid wlan_local
wireless_key *****
wireless_mode ad-hoc #i added this line
auto wlan0

after restarting the network, iwconfig doesn;t pick up this file. so i
have to set it manually with the command: 
"iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc essid local_wlan key s:*****"

then the iwconfig command shows the right settings.
i've put the wireless network monitor on the panel, it shows 100% signal

oh, and just to clarify, i'm not using a wireless router. it's wired to
the desktop, and my second system is a laptop. i'm trying to connect
desktop->laptop in adhoc mode.