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Wireless network setup help needed [solved]


dude67
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I suggest disabling the security on the access point so that WEP is not required. Set it to basic, let it allow everything to connect. You don't need to reset the ap, just need to get no security, so that you can test it actually does work.

 

I have a feeling WEP is not configured in the Linux configuration for your wireless card which is why you can't ping anything.

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I suggest disabling the security on the access point so that WEP is not required. Set it to basic, let it allow everything to connect. You don't need to reset the ap, just need to get no security, so that you can test it actually does work.

 

I have a feeling WEP is not configured in the Linux configuration for your wireless card which is why you can't ping anything.

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...

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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).

Edited by dude67
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How are all your machines configured? Are they all wireless? Or are some wired connections.

 

Try pinging your Linux machine from one of your Windows machines to see if it replies. First try a wired PC to ping the Linux machine and access point. Then try a wireless windows to ping the linux machine as well as a wired machine and access point.

 

Report back with findings.

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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.

Edited by dude67
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Try pinging your Linux machine from one of your Windows machines to see if it replies. First try a wired PC to ping the Linux machine and access point. Then try a wireless windows to ping the linux machine as well as a wired machine and access point.

 

Report back with findings.

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

Edited by dude67
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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

Edited by dude67
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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.

Shutdown PCI card interface and make sure that it does not appear in the routing table. Check (and post here) what this command shows (as root):

# route -n

It could be that packets are being sent to the PCI card interface instead of the WiFi.

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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.

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You can disable the realtek in the BIOS, or you can edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethx and change the onboot option to no or delete the ifcfg-ethx file associated with this card so that it doesn't load at bootup.

 

replace the "x" with the number of the eth device associated with the realtek, eg eth0.

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You can disable the realtek in the BIOS, or you can edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethx and change the onboot option to no or delete the ifcfg-ethx file associated with this card so that it doesn't load at bootup.

 

replace the "x" with the number of the eth device associated with the realtek, eg eth0.

with all my respect Ian, the suggestions to disable the card in BIOS or delete ifcfg-ethx files are bad as that way you won't be able to start/stop the card on demand. A better approach is to stop the card's interface. Assuming the card is configured as eth0, as root, run

# ifdown eth0
# ifup eth0

The first lin stops eth0, the 2nd line starts it again. On my older MDK box, the wired eth0 and wireless eth1 don't work concurrently, though they do work concurrently in Windows (apparently that has been fixed in the later releases using different interface metrics), so I wrote these bash scripts (note that # in bash scripts means comment, you can ignore those lines, but the fist line should not be changed):

#! /bin/bash
# This script shuts down eth0 and starts eth1
/sbin/ifdown eth0
# route del -net 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev eth0
/sbin/ifup eth1
/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.0.1 dev eth1

#! /bin/bash
# This script shuts down eth1 and starts eth0
/sbin/ifdown eth1
#route del -net 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev eth1
/sbin/ifup eth0
#route add default gw 192.168.0.1 dev eth0

The first script stops eth0 and starts eth1, and the other one does the opposite.

 

The ifup and ifdown scripts are parts of the network scripts package and are located at /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. Depending on the distro, when run they may or maynot alter the routing table, so I have to manually adjust the gateway address using the route command when necessary.

 

The best way is to try my scripts line by line. Run each line (except comments) from the CLI. Check the routing table (route -n) every time. A correct routing table should like this

# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination	 Gateway		 Genmask		 Flags Metric Ref	Use Iface
192.168.0.0	 0.0.0.0		 255.255.255.0   U	 0	  0		0 eth1
127.0.0.0	   0.0.0.0		 255.0.0.0	   U	 0	  0		0 lo
0.0.0.0		 192.168.0.1	 0.0.0.0		 UG	0	  0		0 eth1

Note the last line, that's the gateway line. It must contain your AP's IP address and must show eth1 (which is WiFi on my system) as the interface which sends packets to that gateway.

Edited by coverup
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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.

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