dude67

Yes, it is a typo. The subnet is 192.168.254.0 All IPs are in that subnet.

I believe that's a typo. Will double-check though. Thanks.

OK. I disabled all the other ethX interfaces i.e. Realtek Lan-card and HPNA card. Now I have one for the Firewire, one for the wlan and one was "local loopback". I disabled them as per Ian's instructions (onboot=no) as I wanted to be sure that they are not up (and because it took them ages to start up at boot as Linux was trying to issue them IPs). I believe I have tried the ifdown ethX command several times already. But there was no change to the IP table and the situation didn't correct itself. [root@linuxpurkki ~]# ifup ath0 [root@linuxpurkki ~]# route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 192.168.254.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 10 0 0 ath0 0.0.0.0 192.168.254.254 0.0.0.0 UG 10 0 0 ath0 [root@linuxpurkki ~]# Why is the "Destination" marked ...254.0 instead of ...254.2 (as this is configured through drakconnect to be just that)? I did this with the firewall on - didn't try it shorewall disabled. BTW I needed to start ath0 manually as it was down for some reason when Linux started.

Thanks, coverup! OK, that seems like a viable suggestion. But as a newbie to Linux, I'd need some more advice: How can I shut down my Realtek LAN PCI card? I would also need to shut down my HomePNA PCI card as I still have that in my PC. In addition to this possible problem, it takes ages to fire up as Linux is trying to find IPs for the unused PCI-cards. I'm not at my own PC at the moment, but I'll do it next week and post back.

I had a look at my settings in WinXP (PC #1) and the only thing different seems to be that the wireless connection seem to be set to "obtain an IP address automatically" and the DNS the same. In ipconfig I seem to get the same results as I have made static in Linux and that is the following: PC #1 IP: 192.168.254.2 GW, DHCP & DNS IPs are the same: 192.168.254.254 DHCP enabled Autoconfiguration enabled Then there were these; does anyone know what they are: "DNS suffix search list" and "Connection-specific DNS suffix": domain.invalid

A picture is worth a thousand words... :) Both PCs have Planet WL-8310 PCI cards and under Linux it operates with latest Win drivers enabled with ndiswrapper.

When PC no. 1 (dual boot w/ WinXP and Mandriva) is booted as WinXP I can ping from PC no. 2 all three possibilities in my homenetwork: PC no. 2 itself, the gateway and PC no. 1 When PC no. 1 is operating under Linux I cannot ping PC no. 1 from PC no. 2. I shut down the shorewall - no help. I had no wired connections; all efforts done over wlan. It's (still) beyond me. :o

I'll report perhaps tomorrow; it's my son's third birthday today, so I'm not going to be spend this evening with my PCs. :D I've got a very simple network: PC #1 is newer and has Planet WL-8310 WLAN PCI card in it. It uses that to connect to the AP. It also has a Realtek LAN PCI card, which is NOT connected to anything (except for 10 minutes yesterday, when I did some testing). It is a dual boot with winxp and Madriva Free 2006. PC #2 is a single boot machine with winxp. It has Planet WL-8310 WLAN PCI card to connect to the AP. No other connections (except USB to my PVR). AP/DSLmodem/router is Siemens Speedstream 6515 which has an ADSL modem connected to a phoneline connector on the wall. It has 4 ETH ports for ethernet lines but it also is a WLAN Access Point. I use the WLAN AP. All these are situated in different rooms, but the signal level is always between excellent and good (I don't live in a mansion or a castle :P ). That's it. The only wired connection is from the ADSL modem to the wall. All other links (PC - AP - PC; no ad-hoc) are wireless.

No connection. I can get the eth0 (or eth1 - don't remember now) to connect to the AP/modem/router (whatever you may call it), but cannot ping!!! What is going on... anyone? I set the LAN card's IP as 192.168.245.1 and the wlan is 192.168.245.2. I can ping both these IPs but nothing else. I see from ifconfig -a that both eth0 and ath0 seemed to be connected OK and had the right IP addresses. I tried also disabling ath0 from the desktop to see if that caused the problem, but no. There is something really wrong with this scenario... I have no idea what that is. My winxp works like it should: I've both connections active at the moment (the Realtek LAN card and Planet WLAN card).

No dice. I disabled the all the security options (had ESSID brodcasted openly, no MAC restrictions, no keys). The firewall was totally set to OFF. No help. I will try to configure the network once again by connecting to it through eth cable. And perhaps if I can make the AP/modem talk to my Linux first through a cable, I can then make it to connect via air as well. I do not want to make the ethernet my permanent connection, as I hate unnecessary cables. I'll post back...

Thanks Steve, but that was already there.

Nope, I configured the AP in winxp. What do you suggest; resetting the AP and trying to connect to it in Linux?

WEP 128 bit key (reported OK by the signal I get) Allowed MAC nos (all used and unused HW MACs allowed) The AP is Siemens Speedstream 6515 wireless ADSL modem. It has some sort of firewall in it, but as far as I can tell, it should be cofigured OK. It should at least let me in with my user ID and password to let me configure it, but I cannot find it with my Firefox. There is some type of DMZ configurable (for gaming purposes I suppose), but I haven't touched it at all. I could "let the guard down" and disable the firewall, but then my wlan and my ADSL would be wide open. Hmmm... or I could unplug the phonecord to disable my DSL... I'll have a look at that when I get home tonight.

The problem is still there: I cannot ping anything other than the PC itself. Naturally, Firefox cannot connect to anything (not even the AP). I have had the signal all along (sorry, if I've been less than clear on that... :unsure: ). I had problems with madwifi before, but now with ndiswrapper I get the signal every time right away at boot (with madwifi I had all sorts of problems including manually needing to fire up wlan connection - to the point where I do get the signal, but can't connect to it). Current situation is this: I cannot ping my Access Point (even though I receive signal from it), I cannot ping my other PC (running winxp), nor can I ping anything on the internet. Signal is there, even though it shows only one small bar as an icon. In my winxp the signal is either very good or excellent (all bars or all except one). I do not understand what's keeping the AP from pinging...

Nope, couldn't get it to work... I found out that I didn't even have my firewall on. I then turned it on (even had to install a package for that), tried again: no ping, turned it off: no ping. I then added the following line to /etc/modprobe.conf: alias net-pf-10 off No dice. Rebooted. No help either. I didn't remove the ifcfg-sit0 as Ian instructed, but I disabled it . I then tested this: The network was up and running (according to drakroam), turned the AP off and the network was gone. Turned the power back on and the wlan was up and running again. Just to make sure it really was the wlan drakroam reported. Any other suggestions... Here's what my modprobe.conf consists of. Can you see anything wrong with it? alias eth0 r8169 alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0 alias eth2 eth1394 install scsi_hostadapter /sbin/modprobe ahci; /sbin/modprobe ata_piix; /sbin/modprobe sbp2; /bin/true remove snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe -r snd-pcm-oss; /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove snd-intel8x0 install snd-intel8x0 /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-intel8x0 && { /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss; /bin/true; } install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd; /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd; /bin/true alias eth1 pcnet32 alias ieee1394-controller ohci1394 alias ath0 ndiswrapper alias net-pf-10 off

I can post the ifconfig -a right away: ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr [MAC no of my wlan card OK] inet addr:192.168.245.1 Bcast:192.168.245.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::230:4fff:fe39:2441/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:747 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:23 (23.0 b) TX bytes:31708 (30.9 KiB) Interrupt:21 Memory:d3000000-d3010000 It seems OK to me. I might check if this PC was set to be no. 1 (...245.1) or no. 2 (...245.2) in my winxp where I set the network first up and defined the network to the AP. I'll try your suggestions tonight, thanks both! I'll keep you posted. BTW: what is that Brodcast addr? My AP's (gateway) IP is 192.168.245.245.

Thanks Ian, I believe I've done that already. At first I had it say wlan0, but I managed to change it to ath0 (as per my post a couple of days ago). But I'll double-check when I get home tonight. If the problem has to do with what you suggested, Qchem, how do I go about finding out? I may have an idea how to shut down firewall (I remember reading about it somewhere), but what about all the rest you suggested...? Tell me this though: If I get to see the wireless network on my KDE (lower right hand corner) and I can even see the MAC no of the AP through the wireless network (drakroam), how come I'm unable to contact it (ping it)... This is all beyond my comprehension... :o It's most likely something very simple and I'm going to be kicking myself for a week for not figuring it out, but that's the case now.

Nothing wrong with it as far as I can tell: ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"hidden" Nickname:"Esa" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: [MAC no of AP] Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Encryption key:[key is OK] Security mode:open Power Management:off Link Quality:0/100 Signal level:-68 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 Here's what ifconfig -a gave me: ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr [MAC no of my wlan card OK] inet addr:192.168.245.1 Bcast:192.168.245.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::230:4fff:fe39:2441/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:747 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:23 (23.0 b) TX bytes:31708 (30.9 KiB) Interrupt:21 Memory:d3000000-d3010000 I cannot tell if there's anything wrong by this info...

One more development: I've managed to get ath0 to show up and no wlan0 - even when booting up. A question relaiting to the eth's: can one disable a PCI card totally without physically removing it? I have a situation where whenever I'm starting up Mandriva it takes a long while as it's trying to activate a few PCI-cards I have but don't use at the moment. If I could disable them or in other words if I could tell Mandriva not to fire them up while booting, it would be much quicker when loading up. And probably a lot less hassle with the PCI-cards at some point. Anyway the original problem is still a problem: I cannot connect to my network (no other HW returns my pings). Any advice anyone could provide is greatly appreciated!

I managed to install ndiswrapper finally. Now modprobe worked fine. I'm gradually getting closer... B) But I still cannot ping anything other than the PC sending the ping... No gateway, no internet domains. I can see wlan0, but no ath0. I can see the wireless networks and I've managed to configure the right WEP key in order to connect to that network (and see the hidden ESSID). I seem to be connected to the network but it's still not working. Why, what's wrong? When I rebooted the PC, the connection wasn't ready, I had to manually connect wlan0 before it was up again. I cannot understand why I cannot see my AP modem when wlan0 is up... Does it matter if it is wlan0 instead of ath0? Have I missed something here and it doesn't work with wlan0? Suggestions, anyone? :unsure:

I did it anew this morning. I double-checked and re-downloaded the latest drivers from Planet's homepage (card manuf.). I unzipped the file already in winxp. I un-installed the ndiswrapper drivers first with ndiswrapper -e net5211 and checked that no drivers were installed with ndiswrapper. Then I did everthing by the book. Still no luck with it. Here's what I did in the console: [root@localhost 2251]# ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf Installing net5211 [root@localhost 2251]# ndiswrapper -l Installed ndis drivers: net5211 driver present, hardware present [root@localhost 2251]# ndiswrapper -m Adding "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.conf [root@localhost 2251]# vi /etc/modprobe.conf -----> changed wlan0 to ath0 [root@localhost 2251]# vi /etc/modprobe.preload [root@localhost 2251]# depmod -a [root@localhost 2251]# modprobe ndiswrapper FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.12-12mdksmp/misc/ndiswrapper.ko): Invalid argument [root@localhost 2251]# So it seems to stop at modprobe. I've been playing this game for some time now :P so I'd like to get to the second base already. Any ideas what might be causing this?

... OK, I don't know what to do... Does anyone know if the Planet card WL-8310 even work on Mandriva? I tried uninstalling Madwifi and it said there was no madwifi installed... I then booted to winxp and totally cleared the Linux bit of my HD and installed Madriva clean again! To make sure that I didn't have madwifi installed. I did NOT install ndiswrapper that came with the 2006 free Madriva download package (DVD) since I was not confident it was the latest version. I installed the latest (1.10) ndiswrapper according to the sourceforge instructions. I did try your suggestion but [urpmi ndiswrapper] only tried to install the Mandriva package version of the ndiswrapper. I then used the latest drivers I picked up from Planet's homepage and zipped them in Mandriva. I then ndiswrapper -i ar5211.inf (or something like that - I don't recall the actual filename) It did something to install the driver. But then it stated that it is an invalid driver. I loaded the module with [ndiswrapper -m] and changed the /etc/modprobe.conf line that said alias wlan0 ndiswrapper to alias ath0 ndiswrapper but no use. I couldn't get the bloody thing to work... And there we are at the moment. I tried to load the drivers that there is a link to at ndiswrapper link-list for the WL-8310 card, but the link was broken. If anyone has another set of drivers for the WL-8310 card, please post a link here or PM me.

OK. Then a true newbie question: How do I go about uninstalling Madwifi (-ng)?

Do I need to get rid of Madwifi first - before trying with the ndiswrapper? :o

Thanks a million, Ian! I'll give it a go tonight. This solution seems promising!