Last night I downloaded Suse 10.0 and installed it on my laptop (a Toshiba M40). During the installation it detected my wireless card just fine and I used it to download updates during the install. I didn't configure my ethernet card at the time, but it did find it and assigned it a driver. I played on the internet for a few hours and downloaded a bunch of stuff, so I know for a fact the connection worked. I turned off the laptop and went to bed.

This morning I turned on my laptop and had no internet. I played around with it some in KInternet and checked the settings in YaST, but still nothing. I tried plugging a cat5 cable in and using that, but I still got nothing. Not knowing much else to do (as I am new to Linux), I decided some files got corrupted and I decided to reinstall Suse again. This time around it again found my network cards just fine. But when it tried to download updates online it said the connection failed. I don't remember the exact error, but it was something like "ath0 already initialised" and when I tried to use cat5 it said "DHCP already initialized" or something to that effect (I can get the exact phrases if needed). I finished the install and played around for a few more hours to no avail. KInternet shows my wireless card searching for signal but never finding anything. I put in my router's specific info and it doesn't see it. On top of that, there are 3 other routers around here it should be seeing as well (from the neighbors).

When I run the Administration program under Internet in the start menu, it shows that there are cards at eth0 and ath0. However, when asked for connection information, it says that there are no active connections. I am completely lost at this point. Why in the world would it be working yesterday and then just quit? And if it worked during a fresh install, why won't it work under another fresh install? Any help you guys can provide is most appreciated.

TIA

Sounds like possible hardware failure? Or physical switch to display wireless on the computer?

I've tried the switch both ways, but it was in the normal "on" position when it was working last night. I'm installing Windows right now to see if the network cards work. I suspect they will work just fine. When I try iwconfig I can see both ath0 and eth0 just fine. Also, YaST shows both cards and I can configure all of the options for both. But it doesn't seem to matter what I do, they just don't work.

Use the "/sbin/ifconfig" program to display the status of the network interfaces and whether they have ip addresses. Are you using DHCP? I bet it may be as simple as having two interfaces on at the same time using the same subnet.

Try shutting down eth0 and restarting ath0.
sudo /sbin/rcnetwork stop eth0
sudo /sbin/rcnetwork restart ath0

If this works, you may want to setup encryption if you haven't already.

Okay, the cards work in Windows so it's not hardware. I haven't had a chance to do what jschiwal suggested, but I have an error message that will probably tell you guys what my problem is. My wireless network uses WPA with a preshared passphrase which I configured when setting up my wireless (remember, it worked the first time around).

When I installed Suse this last time, I configured the wireless card and left the ethernet untouched. When I tested the internet conenction during the install, this is what it told me:

ath0 device: Atheros communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
ath0 configuration: wlan-id-(my mac address here)
ath0 warning: wpa_supplicant already running on interface
DHCP client is already running on ath0

When I tried with the ethernet, this is what I got:

eth0 device: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8036 Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
eth0 configuration: eth-id-(my mac address)
DHCP client is already running on eth0

What do you think?

I tried your suggestions, here's what happened. When I run "ifconfig" neither adapter shows an ip address. Oh, and yes, I am running DHCP. I shut down eth0 and restarted ath0. When it restarted, it tried to find an address via DHCP and then said "no Ip address yet... backgrounding." And when I run ifconfig again, still no IP address. Still can't get on the internet. I even tried doing the opposite - stopping ath0 and restarting eth0. Same messages as above, same result. I am stumped.

The above was with the firewall off. When it was on, I got the same results as above, except an extra message - "SuSEfirewall2: Warning: ip6tables does not support state matching. Extended IPv6 support disabled. Setting up rules from /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2..."

Okay, I know I've posted 3 in a row, but I've found some more stuff that should hopefully tell you guys what's going on.

Probably the biggest thing that I found is that if I run a Suse live DVD, the wireless works just fine! I checked all the settings and as far as I can tell, I have them set the same as what works in the Live mode. I guess something in the OS is breaking the wireless card drivers, but I am completely stumped as to what is causing it or how to begin to fix it. Also, while running the Live DVD, I right-clicked KInternet in the system tray and looked at some of its settings (just looked, didn't change anything), and after doing that I could still access my router's web config just fine but I could no longer access the internet. I had to go into YaST and redo the wireless card's settings in order to get it to surf the internet again. Also, the Live DVD had the firewall disabled, and I did the same in my config, but no dice. This is blowing my mind.

Here's some of the other stuff I found. Running "ifconfig" shows that there is no IP address set for the wireless card. I can set one by running "ifconfig ath0 inet 192.168.0.5 netmask 255.255.255.0". However, still no internet. After doing this, if I try to run "ifup" or "ifconfig ath0 up" or click on KInternet, the computer locks up and I have to kill the power. I also tried using ndiswrapper to try a different driver. This still didn't give me any internet, but it did kind of find my router. It picked up that a router was there, but it never grabbed the router's mac address and other essentials.

Does any of that give you guys some ideas as to what this is?

With eth0 turned off, run "sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan". Does your wireless network show up in the scan?
If not, you may have a driver or ndiswrapper problem.

Given that it worked during the install, but not latter, I'm wondering if you need to run "sudo /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -m" to write the module alias configuration. Also, running "sudo /sbin/depmod -a" and "sudo /sbin/ldconfig" might be worth a try.
Also look at the output of "/sbin/lsmod" to verify that the ndiswrapper module is loaded.

Sometimes these are run when software is installed, but don't finish or have a problem. The "depmod" program may be run during bootup if new hardware is detected, but I don't know for sure.

One thing that can cause a lockup is removing a module that is in use. For example, you need to shutdown the wireless interface before running "sudo /sbin/rmmod ndiswrapper". I think that the same thing could happen if you try to remove an ndis driver from ndiswrapper

When I run iwlist, nothing shows up. The card worked during the first install, but not during subsequent installs of the OS. I ran all of the sudo commands you listed above and still got nothing. I have tried running the wireless card with ndiswrapper as the module as well as ath_pci. After fiddling around with it a little more, KInternet doesn't lock up on me anymore (probably because you told me how to shut down the interface when messing with stuff). But still no wireless. I tried shutting down the wireless and using ethernet, but that didn't work either. It shows to be up, but KInternet says that it can't get a connection and neither interface ever gets an address from the DHCP server.

Is there some printout that I can paste in here that would help you guys find the problem? It's pretty obvious it's a driver issue, but I just can't figure out what.

Okay, I finally had an idea that could work. AsI said earlier, if I run Suse using the LiveDVD, the wireless works right away. Obviously my configuration isn't loading something correctly. What I should do is compare the two and see if there are any differences, perhaps one config is loading something at boot that the other isn't, etc. What all lists do I need to use to compare the two? lsmod, resolv.conf, etc. I don't know much about Linux so I don't know what all I need to be looking at. If you guys could help me out here that would be great.

Well, I've been trying to get this going for quite a while to no avail. Can anybody help me with what I posted above? Like I said, the wireless works with the LiveDVD but not with a hard drive install, so I need to compare configs on the two. Hope you guys can point me in the right direction.

Can you check whether there are any kernel options loaded in the LiveDVD that are not present in your HDD install ? There may be other causes also, but this is the one which I can imagine right now ....

Is there a file that shows what kernel options have loaded? I'm assuming this would be what all loaded during boot?

Well .. if SUSE uses GRUB then for the HDD install it will be in /boot/grub/menu.lst.

I am not sure about the DVD Live but I think it'll be in the same place(when you boot using the Live DVD). You can check what options are loaded with the kernel when the booting starts and the kernel is being loaded ...

Thanks, but that's not quite what I was looking for. That file just has my 3 boot options - Linux, Linux Safe mode, and Windows. I'm looking for files that show what all is initialised during boot - such as drivers, etc. Do you know where I could look for that? I appreciate the help, btw!