Noob problem - Network is unreachable

[Guest Vantage]

I have this old Thinkpad that I'd like to connect to my wireless network. Actually, I had it connected when it was running Windows 2000, so I know the hardware was good when I started. But it was slow, and it was Windows, so I thought I could do better.

 

I downloaded Mandriva One (Spring 2008). I've run the install several times and it goes smoothly, but I'm not totally sure it ever finishes completely. I wind up at the command line instead of the desktop. But if I enter kde it loads, so I've got something.

 

However, I've got no network. If I go into the Control Center > Wireless Connection, I can see my network name, which says to me the wifi card is still good, and it's not a driver problem. I can even see the neighbor's network. I may have typed in my network information at some point, but I's sure I never typed in his.

 

If I select my network and click [Connect] I see some action in the log window - it stops after running /sbin/iwlist ath0 scanning - but nothing changes. Anything I ping comes back instantly with "Network not available".

 

Any clues? What am I missing?

 

Thanks,

Chuck

Westminster, Colorado

[pikaia]

I had this happen on my tp600's too. I'm not exactly sure what the issue is, but it most likely lies in the acpi. Are you enabling it on start up? What I would suggest is either going into MCC and disabling acpi from the boot menu and trying again, or adding "acpi=force pci=noacpi" or "acpi=off pci=noacpi nolapic"(without quotes) to the boot kernel at the grub to test it out.

 

Good luck.

 

Are you running Mandriva One with Gnome or KDE? I just installed Mandriva One Xfce on an upgraded 600E (500Mhz) and its running pretty good. I highly recommend it. They did a nice job. Add Opera for quickness and its a nice lower resource OS.

[Guest Vantage]

Thanks for the reply. This sounded promising, but there seemed to be no difference whether ACPI was enabled or disabled.

 

I've tried KDE, Gnome, one other (ICE something, I think). I didn't notice any real performance difference.

 

Still stuck, if anyone has any further ideas.

 

Thanks

[David Batson]

From the official forum: Having mysterious wireless issues in 2009? try dhcpcd

 

Several people seem to have resolved mysterious wireless problems (driver seems to be set up right but just can't connect) by switching from dhclient to dhcpcd . You can do this in drakconnect or directly in the /etc/sysconfig/network-script/ifcfg-(interfacename) file. If you try this and it works for you, please post a follow-up, noting your hardware, wireless network topography, and exact experience. thanks!