[SOLVED] Enabling Wireless Networking on BackTrack 4 RC2

01010011 · 03-17-2011, 07:52 PM

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Here is how I successfully enabled wireless networking on BackTrack 4 RC2:

In the Shell Konsole, I ran

Code:

wicd start
wicd-curses

then pressed the right arrow key for Config, and in the Configuring preferences, I ignored the first two options (Use Static IPs, Use Static DNS). I choose the third option (Use DHCP Hostname), changed the DHCP Hostname (which was "bt", to something I made up) and selected "Automatically connect to this network". I entered the router's passphrase (Preshared Key) and F10 to save! Thanks Peacedog!
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Original question:
Hi,

I am new to Linux, but have managed to successfully instal Back Track 4 RC2 on one primary partition on my desktop's harddrive, with Windows XP Pro on the other primary partition. Man, I am loving being able to select which OS to boot with, and Linux in general.

I have a Nexxt Solutions 54m wireless PCI adapter (RTL8185L, nw122nxt12) installed which works great on the Windows side. I've configured it to automatically connect to my internet when it is in range. Our landlord's router is set as a gateway, providing internet access to all of the apartments in my building.

However, I was unsuccessful in getting networking to work on the BackTrack side with the dhclient eth0 command (please see below). I've searched Google, this forum and the backtrack forums but have not found the solution to my problem as yet. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Code:

root@bt:~# /sbin/ifconfig
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)

root@bt:~#  dhclient eth0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/eth0/00:1c:c0:dc:be:ce
Sending on   LPF/eth0/00:1c:c0:dc:be:ce
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.


root@bt:~# /sbin/ifconfig
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)

Update: After I took out the wireless card to record it name and serial number, I replace it and rebooted into windows and noticed it stopped working. There was no wireless icon in the system tray and the LEDs did not light up. I powereddown the PC again, reseated the wireless card and tried again - no change. I am not sure why my wireless card stopped working. Any ideas why?

Peacedog · 03-17-2011, 09:19 PM

Hi 01010011, welcome to LQ. It would be an odd coincidence that the card has stopped working, but it does happen. Have you tried toggling the wifi switch?

On the Linux side, just issuing dhclient isn't likely to work unless you've already associated the card with the access point. Did you start networking? I believe Backtrack has networking turned off by default.

Code:

# /etc/init.d/networking start

To associate with an access point you can use the cli tools iwconfig or WICD from the gui.

Good luck. ;-)

frankbell · 03-17-2011, 09:26 PM

Try running lspci and searching the output to find out what is kind of chip is inside your wireless card--that's more important than the brand name/model.

Here's how my chip appears in lspci:

Code:

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

If lspci doesn't turn it up, try running dmesg; it is not restricted to pci devices. It produces much lengthier output.

Post the results here.

01010011 · 03-17-2011, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peacedog

Hi 01010011, welcome to LQ. It would be an odd coincidence that the card has stopped working, but it does happen. Have you tried toggling the wifi switch?

On the Linux side, just issuing dhclient isn't likely to work unless you've already associated the card with the access point. Did you start networking? I believe Backtrack has networking turned off by default.

Code:

# /etc/init.d/networking start

To associate with an access point you can use the cli tools iwconfig or WICD from the gui.

Good luck. ;-)

Thanks very much for your helpful reply Peacedog and the commands to start networking.

After I reseated the wireless adapter card and reinstalled the drivers, it wireless card's power and activity LEDs bagan to work, it saw my network and tried to connect, but displayed the limited connectivity message along with the yellow exclamation mark.

Anyway, when I restarted, I got this message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe. Please re-install a copy of the above file. I am not sure whether I should just get rid of BT4RC2 or what

Quote:

Originally Posted by frankbell

Try running lspci and searching the output to find out what is kind of chip is inside your wireless card--that's more important than the brand name/model.

Here's how my chip appears in lspci:

Code:

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

If lspci doesn't turn it up, try running dmesg; it is not restricted to pci devices. It produces much lengthier output.

Post the results here.

Thanks a lot. I will do that as soon as I fix this missing ntoskrnl.exe mess

Update:

I restarted windows again, and it booted successfully without the "missing ntoskrnl.exe" error message. I guess all of this is happening because I installed a RC2? However, I am still getting the "Limited or no connectivity" error message. My other computer is connected to the internet just fine.

Update 2: Ok, I finally got my internet connectivity back on the Windows side. The router was not assigning my computer a valid DHCP IP address. Anyway that is resolved now. Now I can resume with enabling networking on BT side.

Update 3: On the BT side i ran the following successfully:

/etc/init.d/networking start
update-rc.d networking defaults

However I got this message when running /etc/init.d/NetworkManager start (No such file or directory)

Peacedog · 03-18-2011, 06:59 PM

What happens if you issue the following:

Code:

# /etc/init.d/wicd start

Good luck. ;-)

01010011 · 03-19-2011, 08:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frankbell

Try running lspci and searching the output to find out what is kind of chip is inside your wireless card--that's more important than the brand name/model.

Here's how my chip appears in lspci:

Code:

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

If lspci doesn't turn it up, try running dmesg; it is not restricted to pci devices. It produces much lengthier output.

Post the results here.

Thanks for your reply, here are the result:

Code:

root@bt:~# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 10)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 10)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G96 [GeForce 9500 GT] (rev a1)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
04:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)
root@bt:~#

Edit 1:
Ok, so I see my wireless network card:

Code:

04:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)

Edit 2:
I ran iwconfig:

Code:

root@bt:~# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=20 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
root@bt:~#

Edit 3:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peacedog

What happens if you issue the following:

Code:

# /etc/init.d/wicd start

This is what I got:

Quote:

Starting Network connection manager: wicd
root@bt:~#

Peacedog · 03-19-2011, 11:53 AM

Okay, it looks like you're using the cli instead of the gui. Wicd is a gui client. It also looks like the card is up. What does the following produce?

Code:

# iwlist wlan0 scan

Good luck. ;-)

01010011 · 03-19-2011, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peacedog

Okay, it looks like you're using the cli instead of the gui. Wicd is a gui client. It also looks like the card is up. What does the following produce?

Code:

# iwlist wlan0 scan

Good luck. ;-)

Hi,

I got this result:

Quote:

wlan0 No scan results

Peacedog · 03-19-2011, 01:35 PM

Let's go back to the start and see if we can get all of the information in one place to analyze since you had the possible hardware issue and this is a Broadcom chip, so you may have to install the proper modules and firmware. Please post the output from the following:

Code:

# lsmod | grep b43
# ifconfig -a
# iwconfig
# iwlist wlan0 scan

Good luck. ;-)

01010011 · 03-20-2011, 12:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peacedog

Please post the output from the following:

Code:

# lsmod | grep b43
# ifconfig -a
# iwconfig
# iwlist wlan0 scan

Ok, here are the results: (sorry I was not able to display the following code properly because I got this silly message: You have included 7 images in your message. .)

Code:

root@bt:~# lsmod | grep b43
root@bt:~# ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1c:c0:dc:be:ce
          UP BROADCAST 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:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:43 Base address:0x2000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          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)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:10:74:2f:c1:9b
          UP BROADCAST 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:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

root@bt:~# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=20 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

01010011 · 03-20-2011, 12:55 AM

Peacedog, here is the rest of the results (sorry I had to break this up into two posts but I kept getting the above mentioned error)

[CODE]
root@bt:~# iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:1E:E5:51:BB:82
Channel:6
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality=18/100 Signal level=18/100
Encryption key on
ESSID:"MyNetworkName"
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Mode:Master
Extra:tsf=0000001fe0a57753
Extra: Last beacon: 743ms ago
IE: Unknown: 00086D61727368616C6C
IE: Unknown: 010882848B962430486C
IE: Unknown: 030106
IE: Unknown: 2A0104
IE: Unknown: 2F0104
IE: Unknown: 32040C121860
IE:

Unknown DD7E0050F204104A0001101044000101103B00010310470010138140001DD211B29FFFC67E816B4BFB102100074C696E6B73 797310230006526F7574657210240007575254353447321042000C4353563031483233383239371054000800060050F20400 0110110011576972656C6573732D4720526F75746572100800020088
IE: Unknown: DD090010180200F4000000
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
root@bt:~# [\CODE]

Peacedog · 03-20-2011, 04:32 PM

Okay, let's try this. Please post the output from the following:

Code:

# lsmod  | grep "b43\|ssb\|wl"

Good luck. ;-)

01010011 · 03-20-2011, 06:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peacedog

Okay, let's try this. Please post the output from the following:

Code:

# lsmod  | grep "b43\|ssb\|wl"

Hmm, nothing seamed to happen, although the cursor stopped blinking

Code:

# lsmod  | grep "b43\|ssb\|wl"
root@bt:~#

Peacedog · 03-20-2011, 08:39 PM

I'm still not seeing what I'm looking for. Let's just look at all of the loaded modules.

Code:

# lsmod

Good luck. ;-)

01010011 · 03-20-2011, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peacedog

I'm still not seeing what I'm looking for. Let's just look at all of the loaded modules.

Code:

# lsmod

Peacedog, thanks a lot for your patience, I really appreciate this. I've been researching every command you have given me so far and I must admit its a bit of a steep learning curve but its fun.

Here are the results:

Code:

root@bt:~# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
sbs                     8489  0
hed                     1147  0
sbshc                   2608  1 sbs
mperf                    891  0
cpufreq_powersave        634  0
cpufreq_performance      638  0
cpufreq_conservative     7564  0
cpufreq_ondemand        6994  0
cpufreq_stats           3073  0
freq_table              2007  2 cpufreq_ondemand,cpufreq_stats
iptable_filter           884  0
ip_tables               9231  1 iptable_filter
x_tables               10782  2 iptable_filter,ip_tables
ipv6                  215277  14
parport_pc             18091  0
lp                      7036  0
parport                24431  2 parport_pc,lp
snd_hda_codec_realtek   189775  1
arc4                    1046  2
ecb                     1565  2
snd_hda_intel          18438  0
snd_hda_codec          56424  2 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep               4642  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm_oss            33635  0
snd_mixer_oss          12386  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                57162  3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy           1023  0
rtl8180                25944  0
snd_seq_oss            23301  0
snd_seq_midi            3720  0
snd_rawmidi            14559  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event      4312  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
rtc_cmos                7838  0
rtc_core               11455  1 rtc_cmos
mac80211              207141  1 rtl8180
video                  15550  0
rtc_lib                 1534  1 rtc_core
output                  1296  1 video
snd_seq                39714  6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
eeprom_93cx6             972  1 rtl8180
cfg80211              120768  2 rtl8180,mac80211
snd_timer              14958  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device          4173  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
rfkill                 12316  1 cfg80211
option                 12554  0
intel_agp              24756  0
usb_wwan                6908  1 option
evdev                   6681  6
snd                    38829  12 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
usbserial              26240  2 option,usb_wwan
iTCO_wdt                8717  0
serio_raw               3352  0
iTCO_vendor_support     1441  1 iTCO_wdt
soundcore               4271  1 snd
agpgart                22961  1 intel_agp
shpchp                 27915  0
snd_page_alloc          5477  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
mac_hid                 2425  0
sg                     20086  0
r8169                  33687  0
pata_acpi               2316  0
ata_generic             2319  0
fuse                   52129  1
root@bt:~#