Ubuntu 7.10 & wireless puzzle

[fede]

OK, here's my puzzle (I trust it has a simple, trivial solution, but I can't find it...):

I have a (a little old, but still wonderful) Sharp M20 currently running Mepis 6.5. It's an extremely lightweight, notepad sized, Transmeta-Efficeon laptop, and it's a life saver, since I can carry it anywhere without any effort... I believe its (on board) wireless might be Prism based, but I didn't look up how to get a positive answer from the system - maybe I should.

It used to run Ubuntu 6.4 and it was great - in particular, WiFi worked right out of the box. When I tried to update to 6.10 or 7.4 WiFi seemed to be lost. On the other hand, with Mepis 6.5 (Ubuntu based) it works again flawlessly....

When LXF came up with the special 7.10 version this month, I jumped on it, but... again, no luck with WiFi (it does recognize the sound system, which Mepis does not - but WiFi is to me more important than sound...). I didn't really install Ubuntu, because I do need the laptop to work, so all this is happening in live mode.

The point is that it realizes there is a card (wlan0). It is able to scan for networks, and finds mine (though it does not post anything about its quality in the graphic scanner). However, trying to give the proper info either to the Gnome or KDE network helpers produces no ability to connect. And even if I give all the right directions manually (iwconfig wlan0 with the proper ESSID and encryption key) dhcpclient does not notice any DHCP offer, and ifconfig with the IP that my router would give to the laptop is accepted, but "network is inaccessible" anyway (and adding the router as the default gateway using route does not change a thing, even if route lists it as, indeed, the default gateway).

I would really like to move to something more current than my Mepis, and I can't figure out why WIFi would be so fussy when a year and a half ago it was so easy... Any ideas? Thanks so much!

[pootman]

Lots of information but not enough detail.

When you issue the comand

Code: Select all

iwconfig wlan0 ESSID key open[/restricted] KEY

what comes up? Assuming it's nothing, what does 'iwconfig' output on its own?

[AJB2K3]

Do you get the wireless icon near the clock? (nm-applet)
Dispite several posts mine didn't work without ndiswrapper installed.

[fede]

I apologize pootman: you are right, but I couldn't figure what the right details would be... So you pushed me to dig deeper, and I, somehow, found the glitch - but I am still wondering how to connect without so much handholding for my interface....

Essentially, telling the right essid seems not to be enough - it needs the explicit MAC address of the access point!

Anyway, here we go:

- during boot, there's a modprobe message:

modprobe: WARNING Error inserting iwlwifi_rc80211_simple (/lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/ubuntu/wireless/iwlwifi/mac80211/origin/net/mac80211/iwlwifi_rc80211_simple.ko: Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

Since eventually I connected, I suppose this must not be as bad as it seems... But what do I know?

- so you go to dmesg, and you get this, as the tail of the output:

[ 281.508000] [drm:radeon_cp_init] *ERROR* radeon_cp_init called without lock held
[ 281.508000] [drm:drm_unlock] *ERROR* Process 8452 using kernel context 0
[ 462.660000] wlan0: Initial auth_alg=0
[ 462.660000] wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:13:46:0e:22:6f
[ 462.664000] wlan0: RX authentication from 00:13:46:0e:22:6f (alg=0 transaction=2 status=13)
[ 462.664000] wlan0: AP denied authentication (auth_alg=0 code=13)
[ 462.664000] wlan0: set auth_alg=1 for next try
[ 462.860000] wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:13:46:0e:22:6f
[ 462.860000] wlan0: RX authentication from 00:13:46:0e:22:6f (alg=1 transaction=2 status=0)
[ 462.860000] wlan0: replying to auth challenge
[ 462.872000] wlan0: RX authentication from 00:13:46:0e:22:6f (alg=1 transaction=4 status=0)
[ 462.872000] wlan0: authenticated
[ 462.872000] wlan0: associate with AP 00:13:46:0e:22:6f
[ 462.872000] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:13:46:0e:22:6f (capab=0x431 status=0 aid=1)
[ 462.876000] wlan0: associated

The problem here is that the AP MAC is not mine. Of course, there is also no active network connection, as seen from iwconfig, ifconfig, icons, whatever - and the access point must be courtesy of some neighbor.

For the fun of it, I tried to run a live vanilla 7.10 (downloaded), and got everything exactly the same, except for an additional line from dmesg:

[ 359.780000] NET: Registered protocol family 17

I'm, sure this has nothing to do with anything here, but since I have no idea what it is about, I just added it...

Anyway, running sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid "INF" enc 123abc456d causes no output, and iwconfig on its own, after that, produces

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"INF"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:13:46:0E:22:6F
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
Link Signal level=73/100
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Note how the access point is still the one from dmesg (which is not associated with the essid INF, which is ours), and the WEP key is not listed either. Incidentally, sudo dhclient wlan0 produces no DHCP offers, but things are so messed up by now that it's understandable...

Repeating the iwconfig command with the right ap MAC connects to my network, so now all is roses... Still, you'd think you shouldn't be so detailed (and I used not to have to).

Anyway, thanks so much. It would be nice to understand a bit more what in the world is going on here - I'd love to learn a bit more about all this - but I mainly put in all this stuff, just in case anybody else might have to cope with a similar situation...

[fede]

Sorry to look I am answering myself... This is an update... OK, as stated above, I am now able to connect to my own WiFi network (which is where I am writing from). However, today I tried to connect to my college WiFi network, and, essentially, I was plunged back to my first scenario: the network was "seen", I could iwconfig to its ESSID, and I even tried to give the AP explicitly...

This works at my home, but it seems like it doesn't work on that (open) network. Doing an iwconfig will show that wlan0 (my card) is not associated, but wlan0:ava (???) is (it even has an IP, but everything is unreachable, if, say, I try to ping or do anything at all)... What is wlan0:ava?? Also, the College network shows everywhere (again, DNS servers, even local IP), but the connection isn't really there.

So, since the WiFi college network shows up there must be a way, but I have no clue... Thanks for your help...