dhcp problems in slackware 10.0

xias · 07-06-2004, 12:47 PM

I have just installed slack 10.0 on my hp omnibook 5700 ctx. I have a trendnet cardbus network card. It installs just fine, lsmod shows the 8139too driver as being loaded. But when I try to get an IP address via dchpcd it doesn't work. I can see the lights blinking on the net card and I can see my router offering the ip address, but it doesn't accept it for whatever reason. I also tried dhclient but it says it can't find eth0. Am I missing something? By the way I've been trolling this forum for about 3 weeks now trying other solutions I've seen. I.E., I tried setting a hostname in dhpcd, I've tried the "-r" option. I've looked at my iptables config. I've tried setting a static route. All I ever get when I ping my router with the static route is "network unreachable". And yes I did setup the route in the router. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

broxys · 07-06-2004, 01:01 PM

perhaps my problem. Is the same? Or related at least.
This is really surprising from the notoriously ultra-stable Slackware.

xias · 07-06-2004, 01:08 PM

Mine does the same thing. I'll bring up the interface with ifconfig. Then I run dhpcd. It timesout waiting for the dhcpoffer and brings the interface down. Very weird. But I've also tried the same thing on slack 9 and got the same result. The sad part is I'm pretty sure the problem is some little setting I forgot to configure, but for the life of me I don't know what it is. Hopefully one of the gods, I mean gurus here can show me the light. Hehe.

broxys · 07-06-2004, 03:18 PM

AH - HA!

try this. I have no clue WHY this works.. but for some reason it allows me to maintain a connection with an AP and get an IP:

1. bring up wirless ingerface
2. dhclient wlan0 (or whatever else). this will fail with some error about the interface not being found.
3. dhcpcd wlan0 (etc..) should then work fine.

WHY does this work? i don't know...

I really hope there's a better way to do this.. but for now, this works for me.

xias · 07-06-2004, 03:20 PM

Well I'm at work now, but I'll try it when I get home.

xias · 07-07-2004, 09:43 AM

Damn, still has the same problem. I'll keep researching and I'll hopefully figure it out. If anyone has any suggestions please post them, I'll be lurking around.

Hangdog42 · 07-07-2004, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Then I run dhpcd

This may be running well into trivia territory, but the command is dhcpcd not dhpcd. If I remember correctly, dhpcd is a dhcp server you can run if you want to use your system as a dhcp server.

xias · 07-07-2004, 12:52 PM

My bad, that was a typo. I sometimes type a little fast.

Hangdog42 · 07-07-2004, 01:46 PM

So much for that idea.....

The only other suggestion I have is to rummage around in /var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages and see if dhcpcd is reporting anything other than the brutally obivous. To be honest, this one has me stumped since I can use dhcpcd on Slackware 10 without any trouble. The only thing I can think of is that the card isn't configured right. Wrong key or ssid for instance.

Actually, if broxys has some spare time, it would be interesting to see the output of ifconfig and iwconfig for the wireless card both before and after the dhclient step.

xias · 07-07-2004, 02:38 PM

My card isn't wireless, it's wired. And ya you're right, I should check the logs. When I get home I'll check them and post back. Thanx for the tip Hangdog42.

broxys · 07-07-2004, 02:51 PM

iwconfig after bringing up the interface:

Code:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"<AP Name>"  Nickname:"<AP Name>"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437GHz  Access Point: <AP MAC>
          Bit Rate:2Mb/s   Tx-Power:2346 dBm   
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:68/92  Signal level:-60 dBm  Noise level:-100 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

ifconfig after `dhclient wlan0`

Code:

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr <My MAC>
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:13 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:3430 (3.3 Kb)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

iwconfig after `dhclient wlan0`

Code:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"<AP Name>"  Nickname:"<AP Name>"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437GHz  Access Point: <AP MAC>
          Bit Rate:2Mb/s   Tx-Power:2346 dBm   
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:66/92  Signal level:-62 dBm  Noise level:-100 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

`dhcpcd wlan0 -d`:

Code:

dhcpcd: MAC address = <My MAC>
dhcpcd: your IP address = 192.168.1.100
dhcpcd: MAC address = <My MAC>
dhcpcd: your IP address = 192.168.1.100

ifconfig after `dhcpcd wlan0`:

Code:

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr <My MAC>
          inet addr:192.168.1.100  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:42 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:11513 (11.2 Kb)  TX bytes:638 (638.0 b)

iwconfig after `dhcpcd wlan0`:

Code:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11-b  ESSID:"<AP Name>"  Nickname:"<AP Name>"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437GHz  Access Point: <AP MAC>
          Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power:2346 dBm   
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:68/92  Signal level:-60 dBm  Noise level:-100 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

It's worth noting that I AM actually using WEP, which makes the "Encryption key: off" bit a little dubious. However, my card uses the prism2_usb drivers, so i am using the linux-wlan-ng tools instead of iwconfig. Perhaps iwconfig isn't aware of all the commands I issue.

Hangdog42 · 07-09-2004, 07:27 AM

Quote:

which makes the "Encryption key: off" bit a little dubious.

You may be right about iwconfig not reflecting the actaul state of the card, but I would still be suspicious about this. From what you've posted, iwconfig is otherwise showing correct information, so I would at least consider that your WEP key isn't being set properly. Probably the best way to test this would be to turn off WEP encryption at your router and see if you can connect then.

broxys · 07-09-2004, 07:47 AM

The thing is, that state is when I was already connected with an IP. I've noticed since then that the Encryption Key: Off bit isn't there every time. So, for isntance, right now my iwconfig looks normal.

What's really wierd to me is that i need to run `dhclient wlan0` before `dhcpcd wlan0` to properly get an IP address.

Hangdog42 · 07-09-2004, 08:00 AM

I don't understand that at all. The only thing I can suggest is to run dhcpcd first and then rummage through your syslogs and see if it has left any indications what is happening. From what you've posted so far, dhclient isn't really messing with the card configuration at all, so I suspect the problem lies somewhere else in the system and this is just a symptom.

I do know that Slackware can do some kind of strange things with kernel modules. I've been working on a script that would scan for access points on start-up, so I loaded my ndiswrapper module, but didn't configure the card any further. However, as soon as I tried to run iwlist, Slackware would run the card configuration script I normally used. The point is I hadn't asked Slackware to run this script and I don't know why it did so there may be something similarly strange going on with dhcpcd your system. Hopefully it is leaving some clue in the syslogs.

dissolved soul · 07-09-2004, 10:16 AM

i had the same problem in slack 10.
i had installed it twice.. dhcp didn't work.
then i installed a third time, and honestly the only difference was i used reiserfs on my root partition instead of ext3.
then dhcp worked fine (and has been working great on my built in ethernet and my pcmcia wireless adapter).

i know that reiserfs wouldnt make any difference, i just thought it was strange.