LinuxQuestions.org - Setting up WEP and computer lockup

- Linux - Wireless Networking (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-wireless-networking-41/)

- - Setting up WEP and computer lockup (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-wireless-networking-41/setting-up-wep-and-computer-lockup-215060/)

Setting up WEP and computer lockup

I got my wireless card working on FC2 but I can't figure out how to make the wep key work. The last time I tried it I couldn't log back in. The computer would load linux but when I went to login it would lockup everytime. I ended up just reinstlling linux and got the card working again. Before i go and try the wep key again has anyone had the lockup problem or know how to get wep going?

This sounds like a buggy driver that has issues taking certain options, what's the card? What module is it loading?

Cheers,

Finegan

Its a linksys wpc54g card. What do you mean what module it is running?

Another thing I just thought is that when I entered the key last time I entered through the GUI in the network options. I believe it was a hex key and it told me to "use 0x when using hex key". I don't know if it made a difference or not but it is something I thought of.

Which driver do you use? From the uberlist:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz

It looks like a Broadcom, so my guess is you are using either the linuxant driver or ndiswrapper?

Cheers,

Finegan

I used ndiswrapper and used the widows driver downloaded from linksys's website.

EDIT: ndiswrapper 0.7 if it matters.

Its horfing over something else, I've gotten lockups out of ndiswrapper from a number of things, skip the gui and we'll see where you get the lockup by hand, so that one step can be avoided, all the GUI is doing is applying the following, but probably all at once, and some of these cards, since the driver is abstracted, have to take commands slower then all at once:

ifconfig wlan0 up (that'll just bring the device up without an IP address)
iwconfig wlan0 mode managed (just to make sure, that's usually the default)
iwconfig wlan0 essid NAMEOFNETWORK (the name is also case sensitive btw)
iwconfig wlan0 enc 1234567890 (No need for 0x to declare a hex key, its expecting a hex key from the command line by default)
iwconfig wlan0 (this will just dump the readout of current settings, should look like:

Code:

root@sidearm:~# iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.



eth0      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"NAMEOFNETWORK"  Nickname:"sidearm"

          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437GHz  Access Point: 00:09:5B:39:EA:AC  

          Bit Rate:11Mb/s  Tx-Power=15 dBm  Sensitivity:1/3  

          Retry limit:4  RTS thr:off  Fragment thr:off

          Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xx

          Power Management:off

          Link Quality:33/92  Signal level:-57 dBm  Noise level:-91 dBm

          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:3

          Tx excessive retries:2  Invalid misc:0  Missed beacon:0

The link quality indicator under ndis hardly ever works so don't be surprised if its 0, the imporant part is this bit: Access Point: 00:09:5B:39:EA:AC

That's the MAC address of the access point, if it sees one then you're doing well. If its FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF or straight 4's or 0's then there's something mis-set.

dhclient wlan0 (should grab a lease from the router if all is well above.)

See where it horfs... a good bit of problems just come from which version of the windows driver you used with Ndiswrapper, my rtl8180 card for instance only works with the 2 versions back win2k driver.

Cheers,

Finegan

Just to make sure I understand, you suggest going through each one of those steps through the command line just to make sure that everything gets setup properly?

If so, I will give it a try in a few minutes.

Yeah, exactly, there's nothing to worry about that as those are just live changes, no states are saved because of those commands, a reboot and all of those settings are cleared.

Cheers,

Finegan

It liked everything until I got to the "iwconfig wlan0 enc xxxxxxxxxx" When I typed that in it said "segmentation fault" After that things all locked up. I had to do a hard shutdown. Once I rebooted, everything came up fine again and the internet works without wep still. :(

Any more suggestions? Different drivers? I downloaded the driver from linksys and they had three versions for the same card but I didn't know which version card I have. Anyone know of a way to tell which version you need?

Nope, Ndiswrapper is a complete crapshoot when it comes to these things... that was the problem though... the only way to get it to work would be to try a different windows driver, all the problems are coming from the blackhole of the window's side.

Cheers,

Finegan

I am going to give one of the other drivers a try and see how that goes. I would really like to get wep going so I can have some sort of security.:(

Would a newer version of ndiswrapper make any difference? I used 0.7 originally so would 0.9 do anything different?

Oh my goodness yes, I started out with 0.6 and that was a buggy little monster compared to 0.9, heck try running CVS, this is an active development project as opposed to something that is mature and is just refining features, all sorts of things have probably just started to work with it in the past 2 versions. It doesn't install much, so just go ahead and install the new version over the old, shouldn't be any problems.

Cheers,

Finegan