I don't know how to connect to my wireless network using Fedora 8
 

Title says it all. I have a shiney new HP laptop, and Fedora appears to be fine with all of my hardware, including my wireless card. I go System, then Administration, then Network, and I can activate my wireless card if I put the IP Address,Subnet Mask and Default Gateway in myself, using the values of my other computer, the one which is plugged directly into my router ethernet-style. I still can't get to the internet, nor can I find any sign that Fedora can find my wireless network, or any of my neighbours for that matter. I have a Linksys WRT54GS router.

It should also be noted that I have all of a week's experience with linux, and that was all Ubuntu, which found my network just fine.

I don't know if this is an answer, but for some reason I have had a lot of problems with network manager in Fedora 7 and 8 (especially 8). Sometimes I boot and it just doesn't work. If everything works in Ubuntu it might well be a Fedora-specific problem.

I don't want to be critical of any distros, but sometimes I have just concluded that Fedora is designed to be cutting-edge, with the problems that might bring.

Hello physicsgeek42

The first thing you have to accept is that sometimes when you have a "shiney new HP laptop" wireless cannot be made to work - any laptop for that matter.

With Linux there is no manufacturer releasing drivers with the cards and if there is something very new in the laptop you might have to wait until Linux catches up.

Thats the negative side.

Let's be positive and see if we can find a way.

From a command line, run the command:

and copy and paste back the part that obviously relates to a wireless card. We'll see what can be done then.

I share your pain....

The most likely issue is that modern distros are very different in how they handle proprietary drivers**. You simply may need to install the drivers, firmware, etc.

On **my** shiny new HP, I've now been thru 6 or 7 different distros comparing how they handle things. In the process, it seemed that the wireless behavior on my system was not consistent.

My laptop (Hp Compaq 8510w) uses the Intel 4965 card + iwl4965 linux driver. Intel advertises this as "developmental".

My current setup is using ArchLinux and connecting with (terminal) commands in the wireless-tools package. Arch offers the 2.6.24 kernel thru the package manager. One feature of this kernel is that the Intel kernel modules are now "built in" to the kernel.

I don't know all of the cause and effect here, but--with Arch/2.6.24 kernel--everything is working 100%. There is hope......


** In the course of all this, I tried Mandriva. Their special trick is to include proprietary drivers only with the paid versions.

on your home wireless network are you allowing broadcast SSID? Are you using encryption such as WEP? If you are using WEP are you forcing shared mode instead of open? What key index is your encryption key? All of these will have to be answered to make the connection after you have verified that your linux distro can actually see and use the wireless built in. Try doing an iwconfig command and see if it lists any wireless adapters. Also be sure you have the wireless-tools installed. I can help you with making the connection from a terminal window if you can in fact access the built-in wireless.

So I ran /sbin/lspci, and I think this is the part related to my wireless card:
Also, it should be noted that I plugged into my router with an ethernet cable, and circumvented the whole mess. Is that ordinary?

Hello physicsgeek42

Yes, that line does indeed refer to your wireless card. Also, yes, Fedora is usually set to use something called NetworkManager which if presented with a choice of connections -Wireless versus Wired - will select the one with the best potential for signal throughput. Usually the wired, and give up on the other unless you insist.

Recent Fedora's, 7 and 8, usually handle the 4965 you list fairly well without much configuration.

Can you specify which Fedora you are using amd if that is up to date with all available updates?

Yeah, that's not unusual. Linux tends to have better support for wired Ethernet devices than for wireless. That being said, Intel is pretty open source friendly and they release drivers for their wireless cards. This link has the links to your drivers. Based on a quick Google, it looks like this driver should already be included in Fedora. Can you check if the iwlwifi driver is installed (do /sbin/lsmod and check for the iwlwifi module)? If it is what do iwconfig and ifconfig -a show?

Mixed news- no iwlwifi, but there is this:

should the "0" in the used by column be of concern to me? iwconfig shows this:

and ifconfig -a shows this:

As well, I'm using Fedora 8, and it installed 223 updates right after I first connected it to my router on Friday.

Hello physicsgeek42

It looks good so far, does:

show anything?

No, it shows this:

On an unrelated note, has anybody else ever found Fedora to be painfully slow? I don't find Firefox to take nearly this long to do anything in Ubuntu or Vista.

Hello physicsgeek42

A couple of things to try.

Assuming you are using Gnome, 'System Menu - Administration - Services', take a look in there and see if the NetworkManager service is ticked. If not, tick it, start the service and save the configuration for next time.

Also in Gnome, 'System Menu - Administration - Network', If you have a wlan0 listed there, make sure it is highlighted, click 'Edit' and make sure it is NOT set to 'Activate device when computer starts', but if it is there tick 'Controlled by NetworkManager'.

Easiest to restart the machine here. Does the NetworkManager icon on the top Gnome panel in the notification area to the right show anything?

If not, next step might be to add a line:

to the file:

if it is not already there.

Reboot again is easiest to ensure the changes are enforced.

If you are not using Gnome the same tools turn up in other places in other Desktops.

You say that you have just updated, if it still doesn't work you should have an older kernel on the Grub boot menu to select. There have been some oddities reported with this latest 2.6.24 one. I haven't heard yet that it affects iwl4965 but it appears to kill some other wireless drivers. Also worth a try.

EDIT:

By the way, my iwl3945 which is working perfectly also has a zero as the last entry in its line of the lsmod output.

Do you mean Firefox opening or Firefox loading pages.

I've never found it slower than any other for either really. For one reason and another I've been using it on Windows this afternoon and it's not a particularly snappy load but I've never been aware that my internet seems slower of faster whichever browser or OS I use.

Hello physicsgeek42

I've just tried iwlist on my machine and noticed something I hadn't considered before.

If you use the /sbin/iwlist command that I gave you before from an ordinary command prompt then indeed you do get "no scan results" as the return.

From your command prompt use:

that's a space and a minus sign after the su, give your root password when requested and then run:

It gives different results with full root rights.

If you see a list of available wireless access points then my earlier post about NetworkManager still holds good.