Post 28 - These are your router settings. There are two sides to a router used for home networking. The lan settings are where your systems connect. The broadband side is connected to your ISP and looks good. I'll see if I can find a PDF file for your router. If I can, then some of what you posted will make more sense to me.

Post 29 - after you ran the command, do an ifconfig to see if the interface comes up. I suspect it didn't, so the ping can not work.

Post 30, once the interface is up, and you can connect to your router, 'iwlist' will display any wireless cells and give you some information about them.

I'll look into the pcmciautils question. I don't know off the top...

OK, like I said Im an idiot, Im not sure what settings to use. I called SBC and they gave me different numbers. They said my ip is 192.168.1.254 subnet 255.255.255.0 Gateway 192.168.1.254 primary dns 68.94.156.1 secondary 68.94.157.1

Can you do me a favor and walke me throught this whole thing with "exactly " what Im supposed to type. I just booted Knoppix and its ready to go - what now?
Thanks very much
John

QUOTE=jrv331]Ok,
Im an idiot. I looked at my settings but they didnt seem to take. Heres what I have on my 2Wire router page: On the left it says Private Network 192.168.0.1 /255.255.255.0 (default) On the right is a box saying Current Settings: Private Network. Router address 192.168.1.254. Subnet 255.255.255.0 DHCP Rance 192.168.1.64 -192.168.1.253. The on a completely different page it says View Broadband details:
Internet Connection Details
Connection Type: PPPoE
Username: jrv331@ameritech.net
Internet Address: 75.33.64.41
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.255
Default Gateway: 75.33.79.254
Primary Domain Name Server: 68.94.156.1
Secondary Domain Name Server: 68.94.157.1
Domain:
Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU): 1492
Gateway Ping: Successful
DNS Communication: Successful
Configuration Server Post: Successful

So whats what?
Thanks
JOhn[/QUOTE]

O.K. let me see If I can.

The first thing is open a knosole 'su' and enter. Run a lsmod command and look for the card driver. This is only to verify it is loaded, if not, nothing will work. If it is there, continue.

Open Wavelan and enter your data to configure the wireless part. On my system the card is called ath0. I think that is what you have stated your card is called by linux also.

The things that are most critical are: ESSID this needs to match what is set on the access point you want to connect to. Channel - as you probably know there are 16 of them. Each access point can have different channels, or frequencies they use. This allows for overlap of WAPs in one location without interference. If you look in your router setup, the frequency or channel will be in there. What you put in to the wireless setup needs to match your access point.

WEP key, if your routers wireless is set up to use a wep key, then you need to enter a wep key, it must match one of the routers keys. If you are not using keys, leave it blank.

Mode, set it to 'auto' or managed, which ever it will accept.

Most other items, just press OK. the defaults are fine.

The script should run. Go to your Konsole, and look to see if iwconfig shows teh values you entered. It should, if not, then this script is not working.

Now for ifconfig. To enter an IP addr 'ifconfig ath0 192.168.1.100' modify the IP to suite your netowrk.

Now try to activate the interface. 'ifconfig ath0 up'. Run a ifconfig, hopefully you see ath0 as an interface. You will need to add the default gateway also. This done with the 'route' command. To add a default gateway, 'route add default gw 192.168.1.254' and to display the routing table, 'route'.

To set up DNS servers on Knoppix, from a konsole edit the file /etc/dhcpc/resolv.conf with a plain text editor like mcedit, and add one line for each nameserver. It will look like this:
Just make the IP's equal the nameservers your ISP gave you.

Ping IP address of your router. If It answers, Success. Let me know.

I did as instructed, although I dont know if I used the correct IP/gateway addresses. I keep getting conflicting stories. I put the ip address of 192.168.1.254. I was not able to ping anythng(except my own laptop) I think I may have SBC walk me through DHCP, it might be easier. But again if if not connected to my network I should be able to at least scan for others - I cant even do that.

John

If you can ping your self, you are very close to getting this working. This means your interface is active, good work. The rest should be a matter of sorting out things like default route, DNS etc. Keep me posted. Happy to help.

Lets forget about my newtork for the moment, how do I get my card just to scan for networks to be able to connect to a wifi spot - there are no parameters for these. That would be more important for me. By this time I shoud atleast be able to do that. Did you get a chance toook at the pcmciautilities package?
Thanks
John

Yep I can ping my self, but thats about it. Heres a question, I notic when I do a iwconfig/ifconfig that besides the ath0, I get a wifi0 that has nothnig with it -- could I be working on the wrong thing here?
Thanks
John

Once you have an IP address, and you can ping yourself, the command to scan for wifi hot spots is 'iwlist scan'. There is a man page for iwlist, it has several other otpions, so have a look at that if you need more than just to scan for hot spots.

In short yes. Do you need them? For Knoppix 5.1 I would say no. If you were running an older distro, say with a 2.4 kernel, they did not support hot plugging of things like pcmcia cards or usb devices. This package replaces some older code and allows for that on older distros. Just in case you are not familiar with hot plugging, it means the ability to remove and insert devices with the system running, and getting the drivers loaded on the fly without restarting the system. It doesn't mean power down, insert, power up, boot and have it work. The old stuff would do that.

The other thing to understand, to install from the link you gave me, you would need the development tools installed. You would download the source code, compile the source and install it. I don't know right now if the development tools are included with a live cd like knoppix. I dought they would be. If you were to install knoppix to a hard drive ( not at all recommended ) then you would need to get these packages from Debain and install the tools first. This is much easier if you install a full distro to hard drive and then used the package manager to do the installing. Sound a little complicated?

On some of your earlier posts you had mentioned other distros like Puppy linux. The story would need research for each one, there is no simple answer. Since you got the card to a point where you can ping yourself, the code is working, don't go there, at least not now.

I get the same results on Knoppix 5.1. I'm taking an educated guess at on this one. I think this has something to do with the fact Knoppix 5.1 has IPv6 driver loaded. You can see it in lsmod if you look. This thing doesn't break anything, I don't know what to do with it either. For now, just ignore it.

Followed your about instructions to the letter, and was able to ping my self but nothing else. Tired iwlist scan and got:
lo doesnt support scanning
wifi0 doesnt support scanning
wlan0 no scan results.

How to I get to use wifi0? Just use that in my commands rather thatn wlan0 or ath0?
Thanks
John

Just tried to hop plug my pcmcia card, it does not work. cardctl status showed nothing in eihter socket. I have to book with the crad in for it to show up.
John

O.K. there has to be some kind of setup issue on your wireless card we have missed. Would you please run the commands 'ifconfig'
'iwconfig' and 'iwlist ath0 scan' and post the results. Also, when you are pining your self, what IP address are you pinging?

Here is what 'iwlist ath0 scan' looks like on my Knoppix system.

The interesting thing is, I can scan my neighbors access points, as well as my own.Mine is cell 1, the rest are not mine.

I was using Puppy 2.14 for the following. Went to network setup and loaded my driver(ath_pci)got a message saying it loaded sucessfully, then took me to a window to configure ath0. Taking the info from SBC I entered:
IP 192.168.1.10
SUB 255.255.255.0
Gateway 192.168.1.254
PDNS 68.94.156.1
SDNS 68.94.157.1

Again got a message that all was well. At that point I got two small compuets in my task bar - when mousing over it said wifi0 and was sending packets out but not receiving any, ath0 was sending nothng out. Opened up a treminal, did a SU, then ran the commands you asked for. I pinged the address I used at set up. I hope this will tell you something, the next step is a hammer.
Thanks
John

sh-3.00# lsmod
Module Size Used by
usb_storage 83904 0
wlan_scan_sta 13968 1
ath_pci 92144 0
ath_rate_sample 14256 1 ath_pci
wlan 194268 4 wlan_scan_sta,ath_pci,ath_rate_sample
ath_hal 191216 3 ath_pci,ath_rate_sample
lp 12520 0
parport_pc 32100 1
parport 35080 2 lp,parport_pc
apm 20100 0
yenta_socket 27516 5
rsrc_nonstatic 12912 1 yenta_socket
i2c_piix4 8380 0
i2c_core 21408 1 i2c_piix4
uhci_hcd 23356 0
usbcore 126116 3 usb_storage,uhci_hcd
nls_iso8859_1 3984 0
nls_cp437 5648 0


sh-3.00# ifconfig
ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:B5:28:43:98
inet addr:192.168.1.10 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
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:0
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
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 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:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wifi0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr
00-0F-B5-28-43-98-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:542 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:24932 (24.3 KiB)
Interrupt:10 Memory:d0980000-d0990000

sh-3.00# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

wifi0 no wireless extensions.

ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.417 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retryff RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality=0/94 Signal level=-95 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sh-3.00#
sh-3.00# iwlist ath0 scan
ath0 No scan results
sh-3.00# ping 192.168.1.10

PING 192.168.1.10 (192.168.1.10): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.4 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.2 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.1 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.1 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.1 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.1 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=0.1 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=0.1 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=0.1 ms

John,

I have spent some time trying to understand why we are not having success. Here is what I know.

I'm as sure as I can be you have the correct drivers loaded. I don't see any problem there. I compared what you have loaded, it matches my system, this my D-link card, Antheros chip set.

The output from 'ifconfig' looks good also. The fact that you can ping your network IP address confirms this.

'iwconfig' - It looks to me as if your card has no signal from any access point.

Note, the link quality field, says 0/94, on my working system I see 65/94. I believe the first number in the ratio is the received db level.

So, now the question is why can't the card see any signal?

Is there a possibility either the antenna on your access point is not working? Or the antenna on your card? How far is your system from your access point? If you are in an apartment, concrete walls lower signal levels. Try moving the access point and system close together if you can not see anything wrong.

The last thing I can think of here is to connect to your router, and find out if there is something in its configuration set up so we can not connect. Have you got the ability to connect to the configuration screens in the router???

On my system, I powered down my access point, and ran some tests to see if I could use iwlist to scan for other access points. I can see my neighbors access points, although very low signal levels. That is not a shock. Most of these things will work to about 500 feet outdoors, and indoors the distance is reduced by walls, the more dense the wall, the shorter the distance.

I have one access point that is open, no keys, but the signal is too low to connect.

Let me know...

The card is fine, my laptop is about 3 feet from the router. Under XP the card is able to pick up 4 different signals in my area besides mine. Just so Im not spinning my wheels here. How do I configure wifi0 instead of ath0? At least the wifi0 is sending signals out? Maybe Im going after the wrong configuration here.
Thanks
John

I don't know, I have never configured anything for wifi0. I have a wifi0 that shows up also.

The difference I see is your card is not seeing a signal form your router. At this point I don't know why.

I understand it works with windows, so, in theory, this should eliminate the hardware. But the fact remains, you are not seeing the signal from the router.

Do you have any type of encryption turned on in the router? There are two types. Could we have a channel mismatch between the router and the linux system? You can display the channels frequency with ifconfig ath0. You would have to connect to the router to see the settings there.

As a point of interest, you can display some information about the wireless connection if you run the command 'cat /proc/net/wireless' Mine shows Status 4, Quality of 64, Level 226 Noise 162.