I've got a long thread in the forums over at mepis.org about this problem:
http://www.mepis.org/node/11694

The link above lists in more details which programs I've tried, error messages and other output I've gotten, etc.

But so far, no one over there has been able to figure it out and I've got a bruise on my forehead from banging my head against the wall.


Here are the pertinent details:

I have a Belkin F5D7000 Wireless G PCI card, v5000. I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router. I have an XP desktop, XP laptop, Mac OSX desktop and Mac OSX laptop, all connecting to this wireless router using WPA, without issue for almost a year now. I can not get the WPA working on the Belkin wireless card in MEPIS. I also have an ethernet card in the same box (I also dual boot it with XP) that connects to the router fine, so I have used that to run synaptix when needed. I have this same wireless card in my other XP desktop. I have tried everything I can find, other than compiling the driver myself, wpa_supplicant, wlassistant, mutilities, wifi-radar, kwifimanager, etc. It will get as far as saying it's connected to my network, and correctly identify the ssid (then again, it could just be reading that from my config file) but I can't connect to anything on the net. The DHCP doesn't seem to work, so I setup a static ip address, but it still doesn't work. I have upgraded to the latest firmware on the Linksys, which broke the DHCP to my mac's. If I turn the WPA off on my router and leave it wide open, then the wireless card works like a champ. But I won't leave my network wide open (I live in an apartment). I used to not broadcast my ssid, but I do now, trying to solve this problem. I also use MAC filtering, which I turned off, but it didn't make any difference either. I've narrowed it down to just the WPA problem.

I tried to setup the ndiswrapper using the driver from my Windows CD. The file was called BLKWGD.INF, not the rt2500.inf I've seen mentioned elsewhere, so I guess this card is a newer version, maybe a different chipset, I have no idea.

The bottom line is the card works, just not WPA. I just can't get it to work. Got any suggestions?

I have really pulled my hair out over this and am very frustrated. I really like MEPIS from what I have got to use so far, but I have got to have a solution. If anyone can help, I'd REALLY appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

Let's start with getting your card working. If you're going to use ndiswrapper, run this...That should say "driver present, hardware detected". If it says anything other then that, it's not working correctly. In your previous post, you mentioned ath0. However, if you run 'ndiswrapper -m" it creates an alias "wlan0". So, when you're doing "ifup" it should be "ifup wlan0" not "ifup ath0". Just a few things that came to mind.

Wpa_supplicant is much easier to use if you have included wpa_cli in the build. It's an easy to use front end for wpa_supplicant and can be used to find out what's going on behind the scenes.

I'll try the ndiswrapper -l in a little bit, my son is on that machine (booted into XP) right now, then I'll report back what it says. I was wondering about the wlan0 issue as thats what I thought it should have been instead of auth0, but ath0 is what Mepis detected and seemed to be trying to make work.

I have been using (attempting to use) wpa_supplicant. How do I tell if wpa_cli is included in the build? I used synaptix to get wpa_supplicant. I have used wpa_gui, isn't that part of the wpa_cli package?

OK, I'll get on that machine in a bit and try it. Should I turn auth0 off in mutilities before I run the ndiswrapper -l command?

After I run the ndiswrapper -l, I'll run the ndiswrapper -m.

Another important question. The card does work as long as I have the encryption turned off on my router. So do you want me to turn that back off before I run these two commands? As I said, the card does work as long as I don't have any encryption turned on, it surfs the net like a champ, but as soon as I try to turn encryption back on, it starts all the weird crap again.

So, encryption on or off before we start this testing?

Sorry for the slow response, I've been out. If Mepis actually detected ath0 and it works without encryption, then there's really no need for ndiswrapper. I must have missed the fact that your wireless card is working, just not with encryption. Ndiswrapper is for using Windows drivers, when your wireless card isn't supported natively in Linux. As for wpa_cli, if you're using wpa_gui, then wpa_cli should be installed. I'm not real familiar with the gui, as I don't use it. In any event, the usual process for me is something like this...

Start wpa_supplicant daemon. I'd remove the "-Dndiswrapper" if you're not using ndiswrapper. Then, I run wpa_cli to make sure I'm connected. You can also just open "wpa_cli" from command line, and then use "help" to see a list of commands.
Then finally, get an IP address.

I got it working. Turns out that I needed the madwifi drivers. I know I tried that driver in the beginning when I first started having this problem, but I must of had some other problem with my configs at the time. Anyway, working like a champ with WPA. Thanks for your help anyway.

Good to hear it's working, thanks for letting us know.

I just wanted to let others know in case they ran into the same problem, they'd know there was a solution.