Hey Everyone.

n00b to Linux and Mandriva and feel like banging head on walls..

I've searched thru various forums and not found exactly what i need to fix this.
It may be that I'm missing the obvious but as a linux n00b i'm not 100% sure what i'm looking for.

Anyway. here's the blerb.

Got Netgear wireless router with WPA-PSK encryption.
Built-in wireless card in laptop Atheros Communication AR5212/AR5213

CAN connect if no security and SSID broadcast ON
CAN'T connect if encryption ON

I've done IFCONFIG and got an EIGHT segment MAC address (?)

(MAC address altered to prevent spoofing represented by XX)

wifi0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-XX-XX-87-XX-88-XX-08-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:89931 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:4436
TX packets:254793 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
RX bytes:9782107 (9.3 MiB) TX bytes:13121834 (12.5 MiB)
Interrupt:19

IWCONFIG shows

ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"CasaSantana" Nickname:"localhost"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:17 dBm Sensitivity=1/1
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/70 Signal level=-97 dBm Noise level=-97 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:31 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Strange as I've set WPA-PSK key yet shows no encryption key set.

In Wirless Settings in Network & Internet > Set up a new network interface, I've set it up as WPA/WPA2 Pre-Shared Key which is not quite the same as on router as router is set to WPA-PSK encryption. Everything else set to automatic i.e DHCP etc.

I've done all the system updates and installed wpa_supplicant Version: 0.6.3 as suggested in another thread but not seemed to do any good.

Something I just happen to fall over was this.. I looked at the wlan system service which wasn't running. so click START and got the following.
(See screenshot)


No idea how to fix that or if its the cause of the problem.

Any ideas please peeps?
Thanks very much
MrD

wlan0 doesn't exist, since you have an Atheros chipset, which is using ath0. However, I would suggest you check to see if NetworkManager is installed and use this to connect your wireless. Ever since I started using this, I never had problems using my wireless. I'm also presuming that your machine is using madwifi as the driver for the Atheros card instead of ndiswrapper.

It could well be the network connectivity icon by the clock which I see in your screenshot.

hello thanks for your reply

At the moment I'm using a hardwire to connect.

I've checked the installed packages and NetworkManager is installed but how do I access it please?

I believe i've installed madwifi but again, not sure if this app is actually managing my connection.

Thanks again for your help

I'm currently unsure of the applet by the clock, so, we can check if NetworkManager is enabled. If you can open a console window, and then type:



that will see if we have a service called networkmanager. The -i means we can do a case-insensitive search, because the service is actually called NetworkManager, and so it means we can save worrying about typing it correctly. If you see this, make sure that it is set to "on" for runlevels 3 and 5. If not, you can do:



to enable it. Then, you'll need to restart the system, and then see if Gnome shows it by the clock. You can check in System/Preferences/Advanced/Sessions and disable the current network applet. Alternatively, just right click it and Settings, and disable the option to always run it.

in the command line. If NetworkManager isn't installed, you can install it with:



I'm just doing this on my install now, as it wasn't installed by default. Then:



and enable networkmanager like I mentioned before. I'll post back when I figure out where the gui app is.

EDIT:

I believe it's called gnome-network, so you can install this, I'll let you know on howto config it shortly.

EDIT2:

Nope, not gnome-network. install nm-applet package and then reboot the system or just log out of Gnome and back in again. Make sure the networkmanager service was enabled as mentioned previously, otherwise nm-applet won't start.

Well, after the nm-applet install, you should just need to click this, and configure the wireless connection.

ok typed
chkconfig --list | grep -i networkmanager

and got

[root@localhost jo]# chkconfig --list | grep -i networkmanager
networkmanager 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
networkmanagerdispatcher 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off

ran chkconfig networkmanager on just got bash prompt

ran urpmi networkmanager just for good measure incase something hadn't installed properly and got

[root@localhost jo]# urpmi networkmanager
Package networkmanager-0.7.0-0.4mdv2008.1.i586 is already installed
Packages networkmanager-0.7.0-0.4mdv2008.1.i586, networkmanager-0.7.0-0.4mdv2008.1.i586 can not be installed

ran chkconfig networkmanagerdispatcher off then
ran chkconfig networkmanager on

rebooted then got some message about some files missing for NetworkManager

EDIT:
Error message was
The NetworkManager Applet could not find some required resources. It cannot continue.

Yes, I got that for nm-applet as well, but it continued to run without problems. Check if networkmanager service is running:



it should be running. Also, you should see nm-applet running by the clock in Gnome, providing that you disabled the Mandriva net-applet that is running by default. I did all this on my install yesterday, and was working fine. Also, when you're done, you just left-click the network connectivity icon near the clock and then you will see an option to connect to wireless networks (at least you should do).

Not sure what the nm-applet is or how to run it.. :(

Typed
service networkmanager status

and got

NetworkManager dead but subsys locked

*shrugs*

I was getting this when networkmanagerdispatcher was enabled. Also, I think I may have also rebooted the computer as well and it was working fine after this. When networkmanager service is working fine, nm-applet automatically will appear next to the clock in Gnome. If you're using gnome of course.

On 2 computers I with different cards I have had a lot of problems connecting with drakx-net-0.35-1mdv2008.1, the latest version of drakx-net, downgrading to drakx-net-0.34-1mdv2008.1, the version from /main/release solved a lot of problems.



I suggest you install smart-gui (a different package manager) set up the sources and use it to downgrade, or maybe someone can give you some commandline to copy and paste into a terminal

Still having probs with this guys.. dont suppose anyone could use remote desktop to have a look please?
thanks

did you downgrade the packages I suggested? You might also have to select dhcpcd instead of dhclient in the advanced section of network setup.

ok this is getting way beyond annoying now. I've done what has been suggested on this thread and im getting nowhere.

either im doing something wrong or this just isnt working.

can someone please tell me whats going on?
Thanks

tried to do 2 screen capture videos but both kept crashing or the video kept flickering.
just to show exactly what i was doing.
sorry.. didnt work

Hi,
I agree that network-manager should be the best solution to getting this problem solved so long as you can the packages installed properly.

I personally have 2008.1 install on my little Alix 3c3 that has an Atheros-based Mini-PCI. The network manager only works if I set up the wireless before hand.

I've added the appropriate iwconfig and route commands to my /etc/rc.d/rc.local file. If I need to make a change for some reason after boot up, I can use the network-manager to make them.

It may be an idea to check to see if you can connect using a manual setup before spending a lot of time compiling a down-grade.