Yeah I was hoping it wasn't going to have any further discussion needed, but I see it didn't work for you so that didn't happen. So, agreed: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=92653

error in "ifconfig"

/home/user # iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

phonet0 no wireless extensions.

gprs0 no wireless extensions.

/home/user #
why am i getting no wireless extension??? please help

1. "ifconfig" and "iwconfig" are two completely different programs. iwconfig is not even in our busybox's build, power or stock, and as far as I know it's not in busybox at all. It's part of the wireless-tools package.

Explanation of how you could have figured this out yourself:
In case the above is not clear, the first command does the 'which' command to get the absolute filepath of the iwcommand, then does ls -l on it. If it was part of busybox, it would be a symlink to busybox, not a standalone binary, but it is a normal file (well, I guess it could also be a hard link, and then it would show up as a normal file, but that is non-standard use of busybox and not how this package does it). The second command does a 'dpkg -S' on the same file, which is a search to identify which Debian package /sbin/iwconfig belongs to. As you can see, it's "wireless-tools". Finally, running 'busybox' with no arguments prints out a list of the available commands in busybox, which is piped to a grep search for 'iwconfig'. If iwconfig was built into the installed busybox, it would show up in the output and then grep would show the line it was on. But the command prints nothing. I checked for this even though I already knew iwconfig was from another package because our busybox will not install symlinks to its own commands if it detects a file that has the same name and location as the utility it comes with (to avoid overriding more fully featured utilities with the busybox ones when those are installed). So just in case I was wrong I wanted to check if maybe busybox had iwconfig but I didn't notice because I had the one from wireless-tools installed. Turns out I was not wrong and our busybox indeed does not have it.

2. Are you use the wifi driver is loaded (i.e. your wifi is 'on')? Given the output, it looks like you're connected to mobile internet ('3G' or whatever you call it) - the gprs0 interface, and that's it. (The local loopback 'lo' interface and the telephony phonet0 are up pretty much all of the time by default.)

it shows wlan now, but no gprs

What else to add to Mentalist's answer?

At least that his has nothing to do with busybox (so should have been asked elsewhere, please).

gprs0 interface will never ever show any wireless extensions, as it is -as well as lo, phonet0 and usb0- no wireless interface (even it distributes data OTA).

New upstream release! Busybox 1.23.0 has been released earlier this week, incorporating a year's worth of development. See http://busybox.net/ for the changelog.

I must admit I'm not using my N900 as my daily driver anymore and my Scratchbox setup was gone. But I couldn't not update busybox-power, so here it is. Please note that this is a major BusyBox release and that I haven't tested it extensively yet. In fact, I've set-up my Fremantle ARMEL and THUMB targets just hours ago.

Debs are available from busybox-power's garage page: https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=2216.

Feedback is appreciated. I'll (try to) use my N900 a bit more in the coming days to see if I can find any bugs. If not, I'll push the updated busybox-power to the repos.

Enjoy!

Out of curiosity, what are you using nowadays? [/off-topic]

I've just pushed busybox-power 1.23.0power1 to the auto-builder and mailed the sources for inclusion in the -thumb repository. Two hotfixes have been released since the first deb; these have, of course, also been included.

Sources can be found in their usual place. And as always, enjoy .

Some refurbished, but otherwise in good shape Motorola Droid 4. It was the closest device to the N900 I could find, form-wise. It works splendid and great and all, but I do miss affinity towards the 'apps' and system.

Having certain apps in Android really makes my life easier. As a consumer, it works quite brilliantly. But as an engineer, it feels like I'm working with my neighbours' toolbox. And I'm not convinced that toolbox is even able to open fully!

It's a really hard trade-off...

Wonderful! THAT was the analogy I have been looking for all these years!

busybox-power in extras-testing needs one more upvote to get promoted to extras. I think it's stable-material, considering the time it has been staging in testing. Anybody who agrees and would like to do the honour? Thanks!

Once upstream BusyBox reaches 1.23.1, I'll update busybox-power and push that to extras-testing. Let's see if we can then get that version into extras . I'll drop a message once that has happened.