Sheevaplug Wifi USB Adapter

I recently added a Wifi adapter to my Sheevaplug since I don't have ethernet in my office. I purchased the Rosewill wifi adapter from Newegg, after reviews seemed to indicate it plays well with Linux. After some searching I learned that there are two main Linux tools for wireless configuration: wireless-tools and wpasupplicant.  I installed wpasupplicant since my wifi access point uses WPA-PSK security.  You can use wireless-tools if you only need WEP (lesser security).

apt-get install wpasupplicant

Then generate the config

wpa_passphrase <essid> <passphrase>

This will generate something like

network={
ssid="rawr"
#psk="foofoofoo"
psk=4a06c8003af16578addc1400cb3fed969dfa94a07164236b886301d20d05fb74
}

I added

proto=WPA
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

Save the config in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Scan for networks

iwlist scan

Hopefully your wireless network appears.

Test wpasupplicant

wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dwext

and run ifconfig to see if it gets an ip address

If it's working, add to /etc/network/interfaces

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

And restart

/etc/init.d/networking restart

And you should have a wireless Sheevaplug.