Lan Barnes wrote:
First, thank you Jim, Gus, and Carl (and Robert for moral support) for the
help yesterday on this. I'm still stuck, but I feel smarter.
Here's where I am. I reinstalled the machine w/ Fedora 8. The wireless
still doesn't work. Jim and I established at the installfest to our own
satisfaction that the machine's card is OK. We concluded that there was a
probable version incompatability between the kernel and the card module as
it was installed on Saturday.
I went to F8 following Gus's advice that it has much better wireless
support. I now believe he's right. I suspect I'm stuck right now in a
configuration ignorance. Presumably, F8 is all compatable already.
May be. I found that F7 support was incrementally better than FC6, which
was already at least as good as Windows (and better when it worked well).
The machine is a "Great Quality NX-L515." That they have to call
themselves "Great Quality" should concern us all.
There are only a handful of laptop makers in the world, most of whom
you've probably never heard of. That list does not include household
names like Sony, Toshiba, HP, etc. Those guys buy them from the same
guys who sell to Great Quality, whoever they are. Name Brand names in
laptops do not get you any more quality than in generic products - the
exception being maybe IBM.
F8 is installed. /lib/firmware has all the correct rt*.bin files, so that
much looks healthy.
I don't know what those are. I'll assume they are RaLink-related drivers.
I am attaching a long text file with the results of every command I could
think of that might help the knowledgable. I stand ready to run other
commands that you send to me. With any kind of luck, we can lick this
thing over the list. However, if it takes it, I can bag it up and travel
to someone's home for hands-on troubleshooting. Let's consider that a last
resort.
<grin> I'm over here asking for a digital barn raising. How did people
live before mailing lists? (I can answer that -- in isolation.)
Learned to manage life themselves, found someone else close who could,
or died.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lbarnes]# service network restart
Shutting down interface wlan0: [ OK ]
Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface wlan0: Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.
[ OK ]
That error is probably not fatal. It seems only to indicate that a
particular parameter is unknown to the driver. IOW, common.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lbarnes]# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:DB:03:BD:61
inet addr:192.168.100.77 Bcast:192.168.100.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:560 (560.0 b) TX bytes:560 (560.0 b)
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:DB:03:BD:61
inet addr:192.168.100.77 Bcast:192.168.100.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
wlan0 should be your card.
wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr
00-19-DB-03-BD-61-D8-F8-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
wmaster0 is showing the same MAC, so it's the same hardware, but I
suspect it's reflecting a different function.
BTW, ifconfig is informationally useful only if Wifi is already working,
useless otherwise. Always use it's cousin iwconfig for manually
configuring, testing, and using wireless. But even then only if you are
using CLI. Otherwise, see below.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lbarnes]# iwlist scan
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.
eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.
wmaster0 Interface doesn't support scanning.
wlan0 No scan results
sit0 Interface doesn't support scanning.
What is wmaster0? Is this a artifact of your particular Wifi chipset? I
know that Fedora does on occasion do some weird things regarding
assignment of Wifi interface names. I'm wondering it that's an alias for
wlan0 and your card/chipset is in the wrong mode. E.g it's in Ad-hoc mode.
# from /etc/sysconfig/hwconf
class: NETWORK
bus: PCI
detached: 0
device: wlan0
driver: rt61pci
desc: "RaLink RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g"
network.hwaddr: 00:19:db:03:bd:61
vendorId: 1814
deviceId: 0302
subVendorId: 1462
subDeviceId: b833
pciType: 1
pcidom: 0
pcibus: 5
pcidev: 3
pcifn: 0
[EMAIL PROTECTED] etc]# less modprobe.conf
alias eth0 8139too
alias scsi_hostadapter libata
alias scsi_hostadapter1 pata_atiixp
alias scsi_hostadapter2 sata_sil
alias wlan0 rt61pci
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-hda-intel index=0
I'm going to assume this is a virgin file, post-install, and all entries
here were added by Fedora itself.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]# lsmod|grep rt6
rt61pci 25153 0
rt2x00pci 10945 1 rt61pci
rt2x00lib 19009 2 rt61pci,rt2x00pci
mac80211 131409 4 rc80211_simple,rt61pci,rt2x00pci,rt2x00lib
eeprom_93cx6 6081 1 rt61pci
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ ping 192.168.100.1
PING 192.168.100.1 (192.168.100.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.100.77 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.100.77 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.100.77 icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable
--- 192.168.100.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors, 100% packet loss, time 3999ms
, pipe 3
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What does the "iwconfig" command report?
***
General tips learned through much pain:
Since you are a GUI guy (that's okay, so am I), you should have both
NetworkManager and his brother NetworkManagerDispatcher running as
services. In Gnome test and manage the card (once it's working) with
nm-applet; in KDE, with Knetworkmanager. All of these programs are
included in Fedora. They all work well. Don't use system-conf-network to
manage Wifi if you can help it. It is at odds with (and inferior to)
NetworkManager. Pick one Wifi network manager and leave the rest alone
or you'll have lots of very nasty-to-diagnose problems. NetworkManager
is an "ItJustWorksYouDon'tNeedtoKnowHow" Wifi manager. And it does.
Make sure you also have wpa_supplicant installed, even if you are not
using WPA or WPA2 encryption (and why would you not unless you're
running a hotspot). It's now virtually required by NetworkManager.
Make sure DBUS and HAL are installed and working. I'm sure they are.
Do NOT set the ESSID on your AP or Wifi router to invisible. This only
causes potential connection problems, and programs like Airsnort have no
difficulty seeing your AP anyway. It's at best security through
obscurity. At worst it leads to the belief that the AP doesn't work
properly.
Find out everything you can about the *specific* chipset in your Wifi
card. This looks like a good place to start:
http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Not all models of chipsets among a given brand work in Linux. Don't
believe that just because someone else said their's works, that yours
will too. Their card may have different guts even if it's the same brand
and model as yours. If you've physically tested the card in another
machine, and it worked, then you know the hardware is okay, and it's
probably just your software setup. (If possible, see if it works in
Windows, but don't assume that means it'll work in Linux).
Search out any mailing lists and forums specific to your card or
chipset. I've found them pretty helpful, at least for IPW2200 and
BCM43xx chipsets.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
