Christmas Wireless - final push today...

Thu Dec 16 19:31:25 UTC 2004

Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 10:21:46 -0800, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>Hi all,
>>   I'm back at the (hopefully) final configuration issue left with
>>this new Christmas present for my son - getting wireless working. I'm
>>close (I think) but not there yet. Hopefully the team can send me in
>>the right direction and I'll get this working soon. I have to wrap the
>>machine no later than tomorrow at noon.
>>
>>   Thanks in advance for any attention I can get today.
>>
>>   I am sending this from a different machine to ensure what I'm doing
>>is absolutely only wireless.
>>
>>   At this point I have done the following:
>>
>>1) ndiswrapper-0.12 is installed
>>
>>2) I have added 'alias wlan0 ndiswrapper' to /etc/modprobe.conf but
>>ndiswrapper is not loaded  at boot time.

It won't unless you have an /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
file set up.  Sample for my Broadcom on FC3:

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
# Broadcom BCM94306 802.11g for VitalStream Irvine office
IPV6INIT=no
ONBOOT=no
USERCTL=no
PEERDNS=yes
GATEWAY=
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=00:90:96:57:E9:FF  <<--this will be different for you
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=golem.corp.publichost.com <<--choose a hostname you want
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
ESSID=someessid  <<--use YOUR ESSID here
CHANNEL=7
KEY=s:xxxxxxxxxxxxx  <<--I use a 13-character ASCII ESSID
KEY=hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh  <<-- Use a 26-character HEX key instead
MODE=Managed
RATE=11Mb/s

>>3) modprobe ndiswrapper by hand works. The driver shows up in lsmod
>>but is used by nothing. (Number 0)

Until it's up, it won't be used by anything.  Once it's up, it'll show
as being used.

>>4) Using the ndiswrapper installation instructions at
>>
>>http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php?Installation
>>
>>I can do the following:
>>
>>iwconfig    (shows wlan0)
>>
>>iwlist wlan0 scan  (shows my ESSID:"146clover", Mode managed, etc.)
>>
>>iwconfig wlan0 key restricted (24-bit XXYYXXYYXXYYXXYY)

Is your access point set up to use 64-, 128-, or 256-bit encryption?
I use 128 here (some older cards can't do 256-bit).

>>ifconfig wlan0 up
>>
>>At this point I've had no error messages, but if I do ifconfig I do
>>not see wlan0 listed.

Try "ifconfig -a", kernel 2.6 doesn't show wireless by default.

>>The install page shows a command 'dhclient wlan0'. When I try this
>>command I get a whole string of messages over the period of 1-2
>>minutes, ending in No DHCPOFFERS received, and then a message:
>>
>>/sbin/dhclient-script: configuration for wlan0 not found.

The "No DHCPOFFERS received" message is most likely because you don't
have a valid ESSID, CHANNEL or KEY set up.

The "configuration for wlan0 not found" isn't really an issue.  It
simply means that you didn't set up any restrictions as to what dhclient
can do.  I have this in my /etc/dhclient/dhclient.conf file to restrict
what DHCP does:

interface "wlan0" {
     send host-name "golem-wireless";
     request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, routers;
     require subnet-mask, routers;
     supersede domain-name-servers 64.7.192.162, 64.7.192.163;
}

The primary weirdo there is the "supersede" line, as I want to use THOSE 
DNS servers and not the ones the DHCP server gives out (DHCP's DNS
servers don't do reliable reverse DNS lookups).  If you don't have such
a clause in your file, don't worry about it--you'll just get everything
the DHCP server spits out.

>>I do not have the above ESSID, key, etc., in any files yet. So
>>possibly that is my issue here?

Most likely.  You need to set up something like I have in my ifcfg-wlan0
file above.  Most importantly, make sure your ESSID, KEY, MODE, and
CHANNEL are set properly.  Things should work fine at that point.  As
a test, try:

iwconfig wlan0 ESSID your-essid CHANNEL your-channel KEY your-key

Remember that "your-key" will be one of the following:

64-bit encryption:	14 hex chars OR "s:" and 7 ASCII chars
128-bit encryption:	26 hex chars OR "s:" and 13 ASCII chars
256-bit encryption:	48 hex chars OR "s:" and 24 ASCII chars

64-bit really is 56-bit, 128-bit is 104-bit, and 256-bit is 192-bit.
Ah, well.

>>I'm going to blast this off now to see if I get an early response back
>>from the list. I'll keep working on this until about 3PM today and
>>will start up at 8AM tomorrow if I'm not successful today.
>>
>>Thanks in advance,
>>Mark
>>
> 
> 
> A few more things:
> 
> 1) I do run WEP for the Windows boxes.

Fine.  You need it for the FC2 box as well.  That's what the ESSID and
KEY are for.

> 2) The key is 26 hexadecimal characters, not 24 as above.

You're using 128-bit encryption.

> 3) The network is 'b only' 

Fine, "g" will revert to "b".  "g" only works at 54Mbps ONLY if ALL
wireless nodes are "g".

> 4) The wireless NIC (DWL-520) is set to 
> Protocol: 802.11b
> Encryption key: on
> 
> 5) The router (Netgear WGT624) does not show the device as attached.
> The router logs show no entries when the FC2 machine does a scan and
> finds the network.
> 
> What do I need to do to really attach to the network?

The valid ESSID, KEY and CHANNEL set.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-  You know the old saying--any technology sufficiently advanced is  -
-               indistinguishable from a Perl script                 -
-                                 --Programming Perl, 2nd Edition    -
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