wlan0 works. Where's my IP, GAteway,DNS???

apinta10 · 06-17-2006, 04:38 PM

Well i installed my wireless with ndiswrapper on Slackware 10.1

wlan0 works

however signal quality shows 0/100. in windows i get 20% quality and 66% signal.

Rx gets a few kbytes
Tx is 0.

ifconfig wlan0 up

sets it up. no ip is shown or netmask... gateway or dns...

FIREWALL is not installed.

So i really dont know what to do more.....

jschiwal · 06-17-2006, 05:16 PM

Is your router or access point a dhcp server? If not you need to supply the IP address/netmask, the gateway address, and the nameserver addresses yourself.

Before that you need to determine what type of authentication that the router uses. You can use as root: iwlist wlan0 scan
to scan for wireless networks. The wireless device needs to associate with the AP before dhcp can be used. Even if your dhcp client is configured correctly, the authentication phase with the AP must be performed first.

apinta10 · 06-17-2006, 07:18 PM

Its open. There is no key for the network.

I just need i to connect and go.

it is a dhcp server too.

still thinking how to solve this.

jschiwal · 06-18-2006, 02:00 AM

I would recommend using wpa instead of being wide open like that.

One thing to check is if your firewall is blocking your dhcp client.

apinta10 · 06-18-2006, 03:12 AM

I dont have any firewalls installed on my Linux.

so i'll use WPA_Supplicant insted of iwconfig.

jschiwal · 06-18-2006, 04:11 AM

iwconfig is a part of wireless tools. You want both a firewall and wpa_supplicant as well.
One of the wireless-tools programs is iwlist. You can use this program to test whether your wireless device is working. As root, "iwlist wlan0 scan" will scan for Access Points.

I'm sure that slackware has an administration manual which covers setting up a wireless network.
The sample wpa_supplicant.conf in /usr/share/doc/packages/wpa_supplicant/ has a number of sample configurations. One of them may be what you want.

A program that wpa_supplicant supplies is called "wpa_cli". You call it like: wpa_cli -p /path/to/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlan0.

There are three things that need to be working before you will get on the internet.

The wireless device needs to be working
Authentication needs to be configured
The dhcp client needs to set up your IP values

First verify that the wireless device is working. Second, configure wpa_supplicant.
Third, make sure that the dhcp client is running. There are three dhcp clients that you might be using. If you use "ps -u root" you might see which one you are using.
Also, consider restarting the network and noting whether you get dhcp error messages.

apinta10 · 06-18-2006, 05:36 PM

when i type

dhclient wlan0

wlan0 - device not found... something like that

on ifconfig it works well.

and when i do

iwconfig wlan0 power on

rx comes in few kbytes tx 0

wpa supplicant latest.. having trouble compiling it

osor · 06-18-2006, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apinta10

I dont have any firewalls installed on my Linux.

While I don't think that firewalling is the cause of your dilemma, I would like to remind everyone that with linux, you don't really need a separate `firewall' program. Firewalling capability is built-in to most vendor-kernels. Also, there are probably at least minimal iptables scripts that run at startup.

apinta10 · 06-19-2006, 04:14 AM

I Configured wpa_supplicant and wpa_cli.

I dont think that i got an issue with connecting. I think that driver or ndis wrapper doesn't work at all like it should.

In wpa_supplicant i made a configuration. However it scans SSIDs too and it can see my network. Now the problem seems to be that my card only receives data RX but it cannot transmit. Now why does that happen. in iwconfig SIGNAL is always 0/100. This did not change when i moved around my antenna to get a better signal.

In windows wifi works with no problem. Quality 20% Signal 66%

why cant linux see that!

jschiwal · 06-20-2006, 02:31 AM

When running wpa_cli, enter the two commands:
scan
scan_results

This is what the results look like on my laptop:

Code:

> scan
OK
> scan_results
bssid / frequency / signal level / flags / ssid
00:14:bf:13:0d:9d       2462    176     [WPA-PSK-TKIP]  jesnet
00:14:bf:98:27:ad       2437    175     [WPA-PSK-TKIP]  linksys_SES_38253
00:14:a5:30:01:b4       2422    183     [WEP]   Motorola
00:14:a5:0d:a0:fb       2412    199             Motorola
00:16:b6:30:ca:81       2437    192             linksys
>

Note the values in the fourth column. This tell you how you need to configure wpa_supplicant.

As I stated earlier, your wireless device needs to be associated with the Access Point before DHCP will work. So dhclient failing is normal at this point, but the error message you saw doesn't seem right. After loading the windows driver, did you remember to also run "ndiswrapper -m" and then "depmod -a"? Throwing in "ldconfig" can never hurt either. The "ndiswrapper -m" step configures a module alias for the ndiswrapper device. The "depmod -a" step was probably done in the "make install" step, but you can repeat it again without harm. These may help the system detect your wireless device when you boot up. I don't think that "ldconfig" is needed in this case. It is used when you install a new library path.

Backing up a bit, I would recommend that you check out the ndiswrapper wiki. Look up your wireless device if it is listed, and make sure that you use the Windows driver that is recommended. Sometimes the driver from the cdrom install disk doesn't work with ndiswrapper. If your device is listed, there will probably be a URL linking to the driver file that you need to download. If the device doesn't seem to be working, this may resolve that problem.

Also double check that "lsmod | grep ndiswrapper" shows that the ndiswrapper kernel module is loaded.

Also be sure to read the files in /usr/share/doc/packages/ndiswrapper and /usr/share/doc/packages/wireless-tools and /usr/share/doc/packages/wpa_supplicant. They will probably point out a number of things that I have forgotten to mention.

Good Luck!