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Any Linux gurus around?

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 11:36 am
by X-R-Cist
I have been on the net for a few days now looking for answers as to why my wireless wont work on FC6. Ive pretty much done everything imaginable, and even posting in the linux forums returned me no answers. So i have a pretty uniquie problem (which i dont because i saw many posts like mine unanswered) or no one knows the answer to it.

here are my details

PC: Laptop HP dv9007tx with ipw3945 wireless
Router: D-link DI-624
OS: Fedora Core 6
Kernel: 2.6.20-1.2952.fc6

Wireless settins on the router

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Extended Range Mode : Disabled
WMM Function(Wireless Qos):Disabled
802.11g Only Mode : Enabled 
SSID Broadcast : Disabled
Channel: Auto
SSID: Wasabi Network
Internal IP: 192.168.0.X (DHCP set on router between 100 and 199)
Subnetmask: 255.255.255.0
Security: None
I have installed the drivers needed through yum and they seem to be working fine as i can see the wireless connection available and with a good signal in my network manager.

Since i have a cable plugged into the laptop from the router, i have 2 options wired and wireless. Currently im running on wired to make this post.

I have played with my ifcfg-eth1 file and god knows so many other things for the last few days and i still cant get it to connect.

Previously i had WEP running, and a dialog box kept popping back up asking me to enter my WEP key. No matter how many times i entered it, the box would pop back up asking me for the WEP key (yes i typed it correctly).

I have disabled security on my router for troubleshooting purposes since then, and now the network manager just keeps trying to connect but to no avail.
It will attempt 3 times and then if no wired LAN is available it will disconnect.

if i do an ifup eth1 this is what i get

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Determining IP information for eth1... failed; no link present.  Check cable?
when i do iwconfig eth1 this is what i get

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eth1      unassociated  ESSID:"Wasabi Network"  Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   
          Retry limit:15   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:5631-6374-3052-4941-3132-3334-35   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:67  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:3868   Missed beacon:0
ive noticed that it is unassociated and there is no AP set.
i have no clue how to fix this, and i am thinking that this could be the cause of my problems.

any help will be very welcome!

shamelessly plagiarized from http://www.mabula.net/dell_insp

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 7:55 pm
by Underpants?
If you've tried this already, My Apologies:
The Intel Pro Wireless 3945b requires the drivers from the FreshRPMs repository:
If you haven't already got FreshRPMs installed:
rpm -ivh http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/ ... noarch.rpm
Then install the drivers for the wireless networking:
yum install ipw3945d ipw3945-firmware dkms-ipw3945
Start the DBUS message system:
service dhcdbd start
Start the NetworkManager system:
service NetworkManager start
Set both of these to start up automatically:
chkconfig --level 345 dhcdbd on
chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManager on
NetworkManager takes over managing your wired and wireless connections. It also remembers your wireless access points and their WPA passwords and logs in to whatever network is closest to you. I've found occasional problems when your laptop is about a foot away from your WiFi router, where NetworkManager continually sees another connection that it thinks is stronger (this will happen in real life when you have one wireless network with multiple access points). If NetworkManager continually disconnects and reconnects every five to ten seconds, just move away and it should be fine. If it disconnects and reconnects every second or so, you probably haven't started DBUS.
I've also found that the FreshRPMs packages for the firmware seem to be out of date. You'll know if you've got the out-of-date drivers because they hard-lock the machine after too much activity, and the kernel log will list microcode errors usually involving DMA. Grab the latest ipw3945-ucode archive from http://bughost.org/ipw3945/ucode/ and put the ipw3945.ucode file in the /lib/firmware directory. Then restart the system using:
service ipw3945d stop
rmmod ipw3945
modprobe -v ipw3945
service ipw3945d start

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 7:57 pm
by Underpants?
two other things jump out at me,
SSID Broadcast : Disabled (I'm assuming wasabi is 100% correct)
and
encryption key needs to be removed from your interface settings (check your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts)

once you've done this and it still does not work, since redhat handles service modules very cleanly, I wouldn't be surprised if things work once you uninstall then re-install everything above.

Re: Any Linux gurus around?

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:06 pm
by Underpants?
yeah, I think it's the latter:
ExWhoreCist wrote: Security: None

Re: Any Linux gurus around?

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 2:18 am
by X-R-Cist
UnderAssBandit? wrote:yeah, I think it's the latter:
ExWhoreCist wrote: Security: None
Well after a bit of playing around with iwconfig and iwlist eth1 scan
i setup the network-script files correctly and got it working.

On bootup ive changed the ipw3945d driver to be loaded before the attempt to bring up the eth1 device so it has an ip address right at startup.

When i log into X network manager will attempt to connect. It will just time out unless i got into System -> administration -> network

and enable the wireless connection. (despite the fact that i already have it as enable on bootup)

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 4:17 am
by Underpants?
glad it worked out :)