d3ac0n Posted March 30, 2005 Report Share Posted March 30, 2005 Well, after finally being able to get my wireless working using ndiswrapper 1.1, I decided that I didn't want to run it unprotected, so I decided that I would setup WEP on my network. I set a 13 digit WEP key on my wireless base station and saved it in. When I went to set the encryption key on Mandrake, I got some strange errors [root@SUMOMO deacon]# iwconfig wlan0 enc 1234567890123 Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) : SET failed on device wlan0; Invalid argument. It doesn't matter WHAT I use for a WEP key or the length. I always get this error. Any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 31, 2005 Report Share Posted March 31, 2005 most likely means that the combination of: your version of ndiswrapper your version of your device's windows driver your device doesn't support WEP. Things to try in order of easiness: 1, get a newer version of the Windows driver 2, upgrade ndiswrapper - you'll have to build it from source and remove the MDK-packaged ndiswrapper.ko.gz in /lib/modules with the newly built one, then run depmod -a 3, get a new card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted March 31, 2005 Report Share Posted March 31, 2005 most likely means that the combination of: your version of ndiswrapper your version of your device's windows driver your device doesn't support WEP. Things to try in order of easiness: 1, get a newer version of the Windows driver 2, upgrade ndiswrapper - you'll have to build it from source and remove the MDK-packaged ndiswrapper.ko.gz in /lib/modules with the newly built one, then run depmod -a 3, get a new card. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Iwconfig CLI can be a pain sometimes... Before you take more drastic measures, make sure that your AP broadcasts SSID, make sure that both the AP and the card are configured to use open/shared WEP (can be either, buth the same for both of them), and make sure that you're using hex or ascii key on both the IP and the card. You can pass those parameters to iwconfig by adding them to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 DEVICE=wlan0 USERCTL=yes BOOTPROTO=dhcp NETMASK=255.255.255.0 ONBOOT=yes HWADDR=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=no NEEDHOSTNAME=yes # TYPE=Wireless MODE=Managed ESSID="Your_AP_essid" ENCRYPTION=on KEY="restricted s:ascii_password" in the last line, restricted stands for "shared key", and "s:" means you use ascii password. Then reboot - for some reason, iwconfig not always flashes settings, especially, if there is a problem. Hard resetting may be better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d3ac0n Posted March 31, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 31, 2005 ok, I understand the part about having ESSID broadcast on, although I don't understand the need for that. It's always worked without encryption with no ESSID broadcast. What I'm stuck on is what you mean by the KEY line. This is what my config file looks like. DEVICE=wlan0 BOOTPROTO=dhcp ONBOOT=yes HWADDR=<my NIC MAC> METRIC=10 MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=no WIRELESS_MODE=Managed WIRELESS_ESSID= <My essid> ENCRPTION=on WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=<my key> DHCP_HOSTNAME=SUMOMO NEEDHOSTNAME=no Now, as far as the shared/not shared, are you talking about normal WEP vs WPA? and why would there be two seperate sets of info on one line for a WEP or WPA key? could you clarify please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d3ac0n Posted March 31, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 31, 2005 most likely means that the combination of: your version of ndiswrapper your version of your device's windows driver your device doesn't support WEP. Things to try in order of easiness: 1, get a newer version of the Windows driver 2, upgrade ndiswrapper - you'll have to build it from source and remove the MDK-packaged ndiswrapper.ko.gz in /lib/modules with the newly built one, then run depmod -a 3, get a new card. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Just as a brief answer to this, I am using the most updated driver for this card, and it does support WEP, and did work while under Windows 2000 with WEP and WPA. Here's a bit from my dmesg output ndiswrapper: using irq 9 wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx using driver net2pg54 wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP, WPA with TKIP, WPA with AES/CCMP So it's not an issue of WEP function not being supported or the NIC not working. I think there is a code issue or a config issue here, I just don't know what. But thanks for the help anyways. I'll take any input I can get. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 31, 2005 Report Share Posted March 31, 2005 (edited) Doesn't necessarily mean *ndiswrapper* is capable of doing WEP on the card with that driver, though. That's why I specified the combination. :) Edited March 31, 2005 by adamw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted April 1, 2005 Report Share Posted April 1, 2005 ok, I understand the part about having ESSID broadcast on, although I don't understand the need for that. It's always worked without encryption with no ESSID broadcast. What I'm stuck on is what you mean by the KEY line. This is what my config file looks like. DEVICE=wlan0 BOOTPROTO=dhcp ONBOOT=yes HWADDR=<my NIC MAC> METRIC=10 MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=no WIRELESS_MODE=Managed WIRELESS_ESSID= <My essid> ENCRPTION=on WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=<my key> DHCP_HOSTNAME=SUMOMO NEEDHOSTNAME=no Now, as far as the shared/not shared, are you talking about normal WEP vs WPA? and why would there be two seperate sets of info on one line for a WEP or WPA key? could you clarify please? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In regard to SSID broadcast, normally it should not matter, but in my case (WPA+driverloader+wpa_supplicant) wireless only works with SSID broadcast enabled. On the other hand, disabling SSID broadcast does not add any extra security against atack, so it can be safely enabled when true security measures are in place, such as encryption. As for WPA vs WEP, no I was not talking about WPA. WPA is a different and more secure authentication/encryption protocol which was introduced to replace WEP after the latter was found vulnerable to attacks. It looks like you're setting up WEP, which by all means better than no security, and should be sufficient for a home user to deter neighbors. First off (though unlikely it matters) ENCRPTION=on should be ENCRYPTION=on, or maybe, WIRELESS_ENCRYPTION=on. I've seen scripts where keywords include the prefix WIRELESS_. Don't know the difference, could be a version/distro specific thing. Second, and perhaps more important, is your key must be setup correctly. There are a couple of options here. On the base station, make sure that you have chosen "WEP" security, and that the option 'shared key' is chosen. Next, choose 128 bit (or 256 bit if you can) key and type in the ASCII key of proper length (128 bit encryption-13 ascii characters). Add the same key to ifcfg-wlan0 in this format WIRELESS_ENC_KEY="restricted s:<my key>" The word "restricted" and the prefix "s:" are important. They correspond to the "shared ascii" setting on the base station. Alternatives are to replace "restricted/shared" with "open", or use the HEX key format (drop "s:" then). Reboot/restart, and see how it goes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted April 1, 2005 Report Share Posted April 1, 2005 you don't need the ENCRYPTION or WIRELESS_ENCRYPTION or whatever line. If you specify the encryption key it will know you want to use encryption. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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