Connect to a greyed out wireless network?

The Karl · 11-06-2009, 09:52 AM

I'm having trouble connecting to the wireless network at my job. The other guys use windows and for them it worked automatically. My network card works as I'm able to connect to other wireless networks.

The network I'm trying to connect to is greyed out in the network manager app and I've found no way of getting any information about why it is greyed out. The cryptation is WEP 128-bit, if that's important.

Does anyone know where the problem is?

nimnull22 · 11-06-2009, 10:58 AM

What Linux do you use?

The Karl · 11-06-2009, 03:06 PM

I use Fedora 11.

By the way, there are other greyed out wireless networks as well (there are a number of small companies in the same building) when I click on the network manager tray icon. My guess is that those networks are restricted in some way, but there has to be some way of logging into them since there are no problems from a windows machine.

nimnull22 · 11-06-2009, 03:13 PM

If you do under root "iwlist wlan0 scan" you will be able to see AP details.

The Karl · 11-09-2009, 01:24 AM

Ok thanks. I tried what you said but I dont know what to do with it

hehe. The result was:

Code:

eth1      Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:1C:F0:61:36:AF
                    ESSID:"MD"
                    Mode:Master
                    Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                    Quality=100/100  Signal level=-34 dBm  Noise level:0 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
                              9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=100
                    IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (2) : TKIP CCMP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (2) : TKIP CCMP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK

The problem as I see it is that I dont know how to proceed since Ive found no way of interacting with the network. I see it in the list but cant do anything.

nimnull22 · 11-09-2009, 10:02 AM

Hi and thanks for output.
As long as I don't see anything about "Extra: Last beacon: NNMms ago" that probably means it is hidden network.
I don't know either why NM can't connect to it. But it doesn't matter.

According to the very good post of the "tredegar" Senior Member: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...57#post3749257

$ sudo iwconfig eth1 mode managed essid MD channel 1

$ sudo ifup eth1 ...

And so on.

To check if you are connected: "$ sudo iwconfig" , you should see ESSID:"MD" and its MAC address.

Try.

rkski · 11-09-2009, 07:24 PM

From the iwlist output that network is using WPA encryption.
If you want to connect to it from the command line you need to get the key and create a wpa_supplicant file. man wpa_supplicant.

nimnull22 · 11-09-2009, 08:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkski

From the iwlist output that network is using WPA encryption.
If you want to connect to it from the command line you need to get the key and create a wpa_supplicant file. man wpa_supplicant.

Yes, but first of all, we need to check CAN he connect to that network. And I thought, it will be possible to connect, but not use.

Because to write ifcfg-eth1 is not easy (especially when should be ifcfg-wlanN)

The Karl · 11-10-2009, 07:07 AM

Thanks for the answers!

I ran the commands in the thread you linked, but I dont think it helped. What I did:

Code:

sudo iwconfig eth1 mode managed essid MD channel 1

then

Code:

$ sudo ifup eth1

after that I tried to get an IP-address with dhclient, but nothing seemed to happen so I interrupted it after a while.

When I run iwconfig I'm still not connected to the network. The output is:

Code:

$ sudo iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

irda0     no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

pan0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Invalid
          Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=0/65535
          Retry limit:16   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/100  Signal level=-130 dBm  Noise level=0 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:243  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:5950   Missed beacon:0

wifi0     IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Invalid
          Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=0/65535
          Retry limit:16   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/100  Signal level=-130 dBm  Noise level=0 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:243  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:5950   Missed beacon:0

About the wifi0 interface. I think its a duplicate of eth1 or something. The interface I use to connect to my home network is eth1.

What do you think? Any ideas?

nimnull22 · 11-10-2009, 08:26 AM

Sorry to confuse you. I looks like you need set up wpa_supplicant even to connect to that network.

Try this page: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/search...rchid=11522533

Or "man wpa_supplicant".

salasi · 11-10-2009, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Karl

I use Fedora 11.

Fedora/Gnome rather than Fedora/KDE, I suppose (which would be good, because the Gnome NM Client has been more robust than the KDE one, until very recently).

Quote:

By the way, there are other greyed out wireless networks as well (there are a number of small companies in the same building) when I click on the network manager tray icon. My guess is that those networks are restricted in some way, but there has to be some way of logging into them since there are no problems from a windows machine.

There can be two (or more) hurdles to overcome: the first, and nearly universal one in this kind of situation, is encryption.

This would cause the network to be 'greyed out' (and so this seems quite likely to be a problem that you have). To get past this hurdle you need to know what kind of encryption is in use (and set that in NM) and know what the pass phrase is and set that in NM, too.

At this point, you should see the network non-greyed-out and ideally you should be able to ping local servers by ip, but you may not have, eg, dns set up and you may not have a sensible IP (you may be able to get your IT to tell you the IP range in use, and set an address in that range manually, if that helps you get going), if you are relying on dhcp to get you an ip. You need to find out whether your site uses dhcp, and if it does, set up 'use dhcp' in your nm client.

At this point, you may have dns: if you have, you should be able to ping by human-readable address (eg ping www.google.com) and get dns lookups (eg dig www.google.com), but you may also have to log on to your network (this is more often done in wifi hotspots, where the encryption part is 'open' but the logon is used to manage access, but some people probably use both controls, thinking that it makes them more secure).

If you need to log on, opening a browser may cause the log on window may open automagically, but you may have to look at the network settings in the browser: if it doesn't know where to get stuff, you still won't have much success. Maybe your IT department can tell you where the browser ought to be pointed in order to pick up an 'autoconfigure' script, if you have one.