I've bought a Rosweill RNX-G300LX Wireless B/G card (which supposedly uses ralink, but I don't know for sure which one) and am looking for help with the next troubleshooting step.

I am having trouble getting it to connect to my Wireless B router. I am using a fresh Knoppix 6 LiveCD (and before that, an olderish version of MythBuntu).

To try to get this to work, I have tried turning off all wireless security at the router, and have turned on broadcasting my ESSID. Knoppix's Internet Wireless Card setup reports seeing my ESSID (in addition to some neighbors), but when I try to connect, it fails. I have other wireless devices that can see and connect to the network just fine.

Any suggestions for a next step to troubleshoot this? I haven't been in a situation where you can see an unsecure wireless network, but can't connect to it.

Many thanks...

can you post your iwconfig -a and ifconfig -a? Have you tried manually connecting to the network at the command line?

Which particular mix of commands is en vogue for command line configuring today? Google returns several different approaches and tried them without success... When I try, I generally go with the
iwconfig wlan0 essid test
dhclient wlan0

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:28587 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28587 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1683006 (1.6 MiB) TX bytes:1683006 (1.6 MiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr <snip>
inet6 addr: <snip> Scope:Link
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)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr <snip>
UP BROADCAST RUNNING 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)



wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"test"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.452 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=16 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thr=2352 B
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


Is there a "Troubleshoot your Wireless" LiveCD. Honestly, the past 4 times I've failed to be able to use Linux have been because wireless "Just Doesn't Work".

I was so hopeful when I saw that the Knoppix LiveCD could see some ESSIDs.

It's odd that you're having this kind of difficulty. I mean, if you can /see/ them, you should be able to connect to them.

And yes, iwconfig is very sheek these days. ;p.

Change your network mode to ad-hoc.

Then run dhclient again. Try restarting your network too.

/etc/init.d/networking restart

cheftec,

Thanks for your efforts. I am getting too old for these fights.

I downloaded the Ubuntu 8.10 cd, and in LiveCD mode it was able to get onto my network both when wide open, and with my normal security precautions in place. I am writing the earlier difficulties off to Knoppix problems, and will move forward with downloading MythBuntu 8.10 and seeing if I can recreate my connection success with it. (Mythbuntu is the intended role for this machine, and it is not connecting with the older version that is on there now).

Thanks again.

Alright. If you have success with Mythbuntu, post here if you had to fight with it first. I'm curious if it's your card.