Wireless Help

[Rick Stevens]

On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 16:33 -0700, brad.mugleston at comcast.net wrote:
> I've got FC2 running on a Dell Latitude and just got a Linksys
> wireless card for it.  I can't get the computer to talk to my
> Linksys wireless router
> 
> I've installed ndiswrapper 1.6 and it seems to be working OK.
> 
> basic commands as going through the setup are:
> 
> ndiswrapper -l
> net8180 driver present, hardware present
> 
> modprobe ndiswrapper
> nothing displayed
> 
> dmesg
> ndiswrapper: version 1.6 loaded
> 
> The lights are on as they should be
> 
> 
> iwconfig
> two warnings
> 1 - driver for device wlan0 has been complied with version 17 of
> wireless extension, while this program is using version 16.  Some
> things may be broken....

> 2 - Driver for device wlan0 recommended version 18 of wireless
> extension, buthas been compoied with version 17, theefore some
> driver features may not be available...

I wouldn't worry about those.

> wlan0 -- this looks good,
> ESSID is correct for my system
> Mode:Managed
> Frequency and Access point look good
> Link Quality 100/100
> Signal level -61dBm
> Noise level -256 dBm

Are you absolutely certain your router is set to managed (or
infrastructure) mode?

> iwlist wlan0 scan finds my router OK Mode is Managed and
> Encryption key is off. Quality here is 0/100

That's indicative that you do NOT have a connection between the card
and your network.  Try changing the mode to ad-hoc and see what happens:

	iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc essid YOUR-ESSID-HERE

> ifconfig wlan0 up returns nothing

If it doesn't join the wireless environment, I'd expect it not to.

> dhclient wlan0 - does a lot of things and ends up with
> No DHCPOFFERS received
> No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
> /sbin/dchlient-script: configuration for wlan0 not found

Yeah, that's ok, too.

> then it says to put ndiswrapper in the /etc/modules file but I
> don't have that file on my machine, should I just add it?

Add a line:

	alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

to your /etc/modprobe.conf file.

> When I ping my router I get the message
> connect:Network is unreachable

Of course.  You have no IP address assigned to your network card,
therefore there's no route to the router.

> 
> OK for the router side.
> Very simple setup. The only security is a wireless MAC filter and
> even with that off I can't talk.
> 
> Yesterday, my notebook MAC address was showing up on the "ACTIVE"
> list, now it's not.
> 
> 
> So two things - I can't get my install saved and for some reason
> I can't get on the network.
> 
> It may be my warnings but so far I haven't figured out what they
> mean or how to fix them.

Try the stuff I mentioned above.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-     I.R.S.: We've got what it takes to take what you've got!       -
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