Wireless network setup help needed [solved]

dude67 · February 16, 2006

I'm having trouble building a wireless network. In my Win XP -world (this PC is a dual boot with Win XP and mandriva 2006) the network is up and running. The network consists of two PCs with Planet WL-8310 PCI cards in both of them. Then there is Siemens Speedstream 6515 wireless ADSL modem that acts as an AP for the network.

The network's IPs are configured static: AP is 192.168.245.245 and the PCs are 192.168.245.1 and .2. I've given the AP all the MAC numbers in my network and the network is protected with open 128 bit WEP key.

I have installed Mandriva 2006 in my "main" PC as a dual boot (LILO) with XP on the "other side". And in my Mandriva I have installed madwifi as the Planet PCI card requires it.

I can see the AP over the network even though the ESSID is hidden and I need to give the WEP key to connect. I would think that I've configured the network OK, but no... I cannot ping any other IP than the host PCs IP (not even the gateway IP). And of course no access to the internet. What am I missing here? :unsure:

I'm not sure this has anything to do with my connection problem, but it's an annoyance. At the start-up I always need to key this in as a root before I can get the ath0 (my wifi) to get connected:

wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta

This even though, I have added this line in to the /etc/modprobe.conf (as per madwifi instructions).

I've followed Streeters instructions (in the pinned post) but to no avail.

It's a real pain switching between Win and Linux in order to connect to the internet just to find solution to my problems...

Oh, one thing: I tried to connect to wireless network (drakroam) which it doesn't seem to find most of the time (and sometimes it does...) and when I do it directly as a root from the console, it shows the following info

[root@Joni ~]# drakroam
SIOCETHTOOL: Operation not supported
SIOCETHTOOL: Operation not supported
Warning: Driver for device sl0 has been compiled with an ancient version
of Wireless Extension, while this program support version 11 and later.
Some things may be broken...

sl0	   Interface doesn't support scanning.

[root@Joni ~]#

What is this mysterious sl0? I've tried to kill it through MCC, but it still seems to hang in there. This following is something I grabbed while in MCC.

18:45:22 net_applet[7273]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r sl0 
18:45:22 net_applet[7273]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r -a sl0 
18:45:22 net_applet[7273]: running: /sbin/iwlist sl0 scanning 
18:45:26 net_applet[7273]: launched command: /usr/sbin/usernetctl sl0 report 
18:45:26 net_applet[7273]: running: kdesu --ignorebutton -c /sbin/ifdown sl0 
18:45:31 net_applet[7273]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r sl0 
18:45:31 net_applet[7273]: running: /sbin/iwgetid -r -a sl0 
18:45:31 net_applet[7273]: running: /sbin/iwlist sl0 scanning

Any help to a newby is appreciated!

-edit-

typo

Edited February 17, 2006 by dude67

Qchem · February 16, 2006

I would assume that Mandriva has tried to autodetect the card and has added it as sl0 - causing you conflicts. If you have a look at lsmod (lists all the loaded kernel modules) you may be able to see two wireless card entries (or paste them here at get us to look :D ).

dude67 · February 17, 2006

OK, thanks Qchem. Seems like a logical enough reason. I'll have a look tonight and post the results here.

- EDIT -

Now that you mention it, I seem to remember seeing ath0 failing in the boot sequence (in "verbose" mode) whenever I'm starting Mandriva (pressing esc when it boots).

If that's the case, what can I do to fix it?

Edited February 17, 2006 by spinynorman

ianw1974 · February 17, 2006

I have Mandriva 2006, and an Atheros chipset, that Mandriva gives ath0. I removed madwifi, one because it wouldn't work. Every time I booted, I had to go into a gui util to refresh the card to pick up settings.

And even then it wouldn't ping my network correctly.

I suggest using ndiswrapper with the winxp drivers for your atheros chipset card, and it'll work a treat. This is what I did in the end.

Just make sure that ndiswrapper module is loading in /etc/modprobe.preload and it'll start at boot. Use the instructions from the ndiswrapper homepage to get it up and running. No need to compile using there stuff, just use:

urpmi ndiswrapper

to install it. Oh, and since the interface is ath0, you'll need to change the /etc/modprobe.conf so instead of this line reading:

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

change it to:

alias ath0 ndiswrapper

since I was never able to find a way to get Mandriva to call ath0 device wlan0 instead.

dude67 · February 17, 2006

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

:thumbs:

dude67 · February 17, 2006

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

:o

Qchem · February 17, 2006

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

Yes, otherwise you may get more conflicts. You might want to check the pinned thread on ndiswrapper at the top of this forum.

dude67 · February 17, 2006

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

ianw1974 · February 17, 2006

Just do this:

urpme madwifi

and that'll take care of it.

dude67 · February 17, 2006

... 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.

dude67 · February 18, 2006

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?

dude67 · February 18, 2006

I managed to install ndiswrapper finally. :thumbs: 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. :wall:

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:

dude67 · February 18, 2006

One more development:

I've managed to get ath0 to show up and no wlan0 - even when booting up. :thumbs:

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!

Qchem · February 18, 2006

What does iwconfig say about your card? Do the details look right?

dude67 · February 19, 2006

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...

Wireless network setup help needed [solved]

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