ipw2100 wireless card question
 

Ok, I am a totall Lunux newb. About once a month or so I try to get my Intell pro2100 wireless working. I have seen the links for doing it, tried it, very confusing to me. By the way this is on a Dell Inpiron 600m (WinXP/FC5 duall boot). Today, I might have made progress. I downloaded the firmware and driver, now the computer seems to see the card. When I try to activate eth1 (using system, admin, network on the Gnome GUI), I get an error saying it cannot get an IP. Before, it would see the card, but not give me many options.

Now my /var/log/messages (monitored)-System Log Viewer says this:

iee80211: 802.11 data/management/control.stack, git-1.1.7
iee80211: Copyright(c) 2004-2005 Intel Corp
ipw2100 Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Driver, 1.1.3
ACPI: PCI Interupt 0000:02:03[A] -> Link [linkb] ->GSI 5 (level, low) ->IRQ 5
ipw2100: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Network Connection

Does this mean the card is installed, and it is a network configuration problem, or am I back to step one? The wireless router is a Belkin Wireless G router. I know the router and wireless card work, if I boot into WinXP, wireless works. I tried without security on the router, still no luck, so I am thinking I am back to step one. Hope not.

Thanks a lot for your time! And if you do reply, please type your responce slowly, I am a noob!

Have a good one!

E

It does look like your wireless device is working, and you have an authentication problem. You need to set up the authentication before the DHCP client can get an IP address. It sounds like that may be your problem. Another possibility is a conflict with the NIC interface.


I'll assume that you have the wireless-tools package installed.

One of the programs this package contains is named "iwlist". You can enter in the command:
sudo iwlist eth1 scan
This will scan for Access Points and produce an output that looks like this:
This is the output of the command which I just entered. It would give results even if you are not authenticated.
That is why it is a quick and easy way to check if the wireless device is working.

You can verify if the device is present with the /sbin/ifconfig and /usr/sbin/iwconfig commands. The ifconfig command will show whether an interface has an IP address assigned. It will show the "lo", "eth0" and "eth1" interfaces. The iwconfig command will show information about the wireless interface.

I use SuSE rather than Fedora, but I believe that they both save the network interface configuration files in /etc/sysconfig/network. There should be both an ifcfg-eth0 file and an ifcfg-eth1 file there. This is the information that is saved by your Network Interface Setup Dialog.
The keys need to be the same that the router uses. I'd recommend connecting directly to the routers web interface on the NIC card, and cutting and pasting from the router wpa_psk setup page to an editor.

The authentication is performed by wpa_supplicant. Make sure that the wpa_supplicant package is installed also.

The second possible problem I mentioned deals with how you have the interface come up. In the network configuration dialogs, look for options that deal with device activation. Select an option that sounds like "on cable connection". This will defer the startup until the ethernet cable is connected. Select "on boot" or something similar for the wireless device "eth1".
Good Luck!

wireless-tools reference: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_...nux/Tools.html

Thanks for your reply.
 

You were correct about the conflict. I am still not sure how I got it working, (used the GUI) but when I finally right clicked on the internet connection, and enabled wireless, it worked after a reboot!

I have Wireless now!!!

Have a good one!

E