argh -- can't get wireless in someone else's house

[John W. Linville]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 08:44:25AM -0500, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 
>   i'm embarrassed to admit that i can't, for the life of me, get a
> wireless connection at a friend's house at the moment.  updated fedora
> 8, and a stock linksys WRT54GL.  i have the SSID, i have the WEP key,
> i even have the router password, so i've logged in and checked
> everything -- no MAC filtering, no DHCP client limit, etc.
> 
>   but when i try to bring up wireless, /var/log/messages shows me:
> 
> Feb  8 08:37:59 localhost dhclient: wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
> Feb  8 08:37:59 localhost dhclient: wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
> Feb  8 08:37:59 localhost dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
> Feb  8 08:38:07 localhost dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
> ...
> Feb  8 08:39:00 localhost dhclient: No DHCPOFFERS received.
> 
>   i can certainly see the WAP:
> 
> # iwlist wlan0 scan
> ...
> Cell 02 - Address: 00:18:39:6A:01:EF
>                     ESSID:"XXXXXXXX"
>                     Mode:Master
>                     Channel:6
>                     Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
>                     Quality=83/100 Signal level=-46 dBm  Noise level=-67 dBm
>                     Encryption key:on
>                     Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
>                               24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
>                               12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
> ...
> 
> 
>   i'm pretty much out of ideas here -- any thoughts?

I'd have to see more of /var/log/messages, as well as iwconfig output.
Are they using shared-key authentication instead of open?  Or perhaps
vice versa?

Are you setting the WEP key before setting the SSID?

Are you doing this manually?  Did you stop NetworkManager before
doing any manual configuration?

John
-- 
John W. Linville
linville at redhat.com