James G. Sack (jim) wrote:
Ralph Shumaker wrote:
..
> > someone wrote:
(looks like mine)
That's interesting. When I booted up on Knoppix and ran ifconfig, I
noticed that eth1 had an IPv4 address, something like 192.168.0.25 or
the like. That suggested to me that I was wirelessly logged into
someone's network. So I tried surfing the web. I went to the Knoppix
home page, CraigsList, and YouTube.
I rebooted on Fedora 9, but couldn't access the web from there. I
didn't have an IPv4 address. I did ifdown eth1, which made it
disappear from the ifconfig list but not from the iwconfig list. Then
I did ifup eth1. But eth1 wouldn't come back up, saying:
Determining IP information for eth1... failed; no link present. Check
cable?
Although "cable" seem an inappropriate suggestion for wireless, it just
means you couldn't find an AP it could connect to.
That was my assumption.
But when Fedora 9 boots up, ifconfig lists it.
Why would Knoppix activate it on someone's AP, but not Fedora?
Timing? Maybe the AP shut down, or the signal weakened?
But it seems rather consistent. Knoppix automatically connects and
reconnects unless I do ifdown eth1 then ifup eth1. Fedora 9 never
connects to the WAP.
I'm going to go back to Knoppix. I'll let it run overnight, connected
(but not using the /borrowed/ network connection), and see if I get
any ipw2200 error messages in dmesg.
$ iwconfig eth1
eth1 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"default"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:15:E9:ED:98:B8
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=8/0
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=44/100 Signal level=-74 dBm Noise level=-91 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:1
I never know how much faith to put into signal level reports. To me the
signal level seems low, but signal-to-noise nevertheless seems ok. Maybe
a radio person can add to my speculations.
I don't know much about reading them. To me, the vital point was that
the signal is there, and strong enough to recognize that the ESSID is
"default", or "NETGEAR", or whatnot. I included all that info in case
someone thought it might be important.
$ ifconfig eth1
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
inet addr:192.168.0.123 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: xxxx::xxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx/xx Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:83 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:11674 (11.4 KiB) TX bytes:2304 (2.2 KiB)
Interrupt:18 Base address:0xc000 Memory:dfcff000-dfcfffff
Hmmm, it would seem that whatever network I was connected to has since
been shut off:
$ iwconfig eth1
eth1 unassociated ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Channel=0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=8/0
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
Bazaar, It's back. Maybe I have a weak signal and it just took a few
minutes of sitting on the table next to the window to re-acquire the
signal.
Knoppix dmesg has encountered one of the ipw2200 error messages, but not
the one that is common in Fedora ("Failed to send ..."), rather the
other one "ipw2200 Firmware error detected. Restarting." and my
/borrowed/ wireless internet connection hasn't responded since. Oops, I
spoke too soon, Google just came up.
The little I saw about a scanmode bug related to APs that broadcast
without an essid, seems consistent (with some imagination factored in)
with what you are seeing.
It seems like I keep coming up with obscure things that I need help
with. I must commend you jim, as you are one of the few who at least
offer guesses (and call them such) when you don't know something.
Often, your guesses at least give me something to check out (which helps
me learn more) whether they pan out or not.
--
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow
words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways
to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
--James Davis Nicoll
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