Interface wlan0 doesn't exist!
 

Back again! I think my favorite line in BLFS is in one of the packages (maybe Xwindows) it says ...not IF you have a problem, but WHEN....

And when has come so many times!!!

I built through lfs 6.8 and into BLFS development on my HP dv5229 laptop

I'm up to using Fluxbox and Firefox on the BLFS but can't get wireless up.

eth0 connects and I am online when I'm plugged in.

This laptop has the broadcom card that requires the B43 driver which I've put on a couple machines running Ubuntu. So...

During bootup I get. Interface wlan0 does not exist [warn]

Do I need to redosomething in the kernel?
Get the b43 driver and if so (I already downloaded it and put it in firmware directory with fwcutter) how do I point the kernel or udev to that driver?
Or... am i totally offbase and its a configuration thing?

Thanks

Hi,
You do need to activate the correct option(s) in the kernel (and thus rebuild the kernel). The wlan and eth interfaces are created at an early stage and this information comes from what's present in the kernel.

Check the Networking support -> Wireless and the Device Drivers -> Network device support -> Wireless LAN sections to start with.

Hope this helps.

kernel
 

I ll give it a shot when I get home from work.

I had a Broadcom b43 wifi card in my netbook. It was a nightmare to get it to work. I could only get it to work with the closed source module which was a total pain. Some chipsets work with the b43 kernel module (and even those need closed source firmware) but some don't. Mine was one of the ones that didn't work. I worked at it for a while and then gave up. Why should I support a company which won't produce an open source driver for its products? £15 bought me an atheros card which has a driver in the kernel. No need for firmware. It's worked perfectly for me ever since. Broadcom can [expletive deleted]

I agree I have broadcom cards on two machines and they've both been a pain. Made some progress last night after I rebuilt the kernel.

Well I redid the kernel once and found the b43 support. That seemed to get everything running on bootup. It said adding 192... to eth0 OK then adding 192... to wlan0 OK. I checked dmesg and it says the b43 driver loaded. Yet I can only get eth0 to work.

well now I'm stumped. iwconfig gives me this now.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"xxxxxxxx"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:21:29:CF:34:85
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:XXXXXXXXXX
Power Management:off
Link Quality=67/70 Signal level=-43 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Maybe its my lack of understanding this whole network shindig, but it looks to me like this should be working. Yet it doesn't.

Any thoughts, I'm lost as to what to even google at this point!!

That looks like the wireless is working, But you are not connected to anything if you were connected you would have an IP allocated to it

Hi randalleg,

I agree with spiky0011, the wireless hardware is detected and initialized but no IP address is associated with it.

Did you do this BLFS chapter: Wireless Tools-28? The User Notes link in that chapter also has some information that might be helpful (especially the startup scripts at the bottom).

Just in case: You can use ifconfig wlan0 to check this specific interface.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the input, just got home will start lookin around again. in the meantime hears what I get from ip addr. Does iwconfig look for dns info somewhere besides resolv.conf???


ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN qlen 1000
link/ether 00:16:d4:02:e2:09 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.104/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth0
inet6 fe80::216:d4ff:fe02:e209/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP qlen 1000
link/ether 00:14:a5:a3:ea:b7 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.104/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global wlan0
inet6 fe80::214:a5ff:fea3:eab7/64 scope link tentative
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
4: sit0: <NOARP> mtu 1480 qdisc noop state DOWN
link/sit 0.0.0.0 brd 0.0.0.0

Hi,

In the above posted output I see that both eth0 and wlan0 have the same ip address (192.168.1.104). Did you mistakenly give both devices the same IP?

Also: Although you can use a static IP for wireless devices, most of the time DHCP is used (by the modem in this case) and the device is assigned the IP given by the modem.

DHCP is out of scope for LFS and needs to be set up by doinbg this chapter: BLFS - DHCP-3.0.6 Client Configuration

Hope this helps.

Thanks Druuna,
I noticed that as well and corrected the IP problem to no avail, same behavior. I suspected what you say about dhcp and I guess thats what I'll try. I think it just felt like defeat to give up on the static IP thing. Although since Ill need it eventually anyway I guess thats what I'll try tonight and see if it solves the issue.

The thing that was weird yesterday was that in setting up IPtables I had a problem with martian source logs being outputted on the screen all the time. I got over it before by changing the level of error reporting (something like that). So I solved it on this box the same way and it went away. HOWEVER, when I "connect" wlan0 (if you could call it that since it wont do anything.) It starts outputting the errors again (which it doesn't with eth0).

Also its possible (though its late) that the wlan0 disconnects after a few minutes. Could I just be having a problem with the wep setup? (though I have a broadcom card on another machine that logs in with no issues, however its Ubuntu.)

OK well thanks for reading Ill get to the dhcp as soon as possible, let me know if you have any other thoughts. Hopefully someday Ill learn enough here to pay back the knowledge to some folks!!!

Basically solved
 

I'm gonna say this thread is solved cause the original question was solved and its grown into a whole new beast that I reposted another thread about.