Hello:


I am somewhat new to Linux having had a go at installing Ubuntu and failing to get my WLAN up and running, so I have tried Mandriva 2007, which I have to say looks splendid. It also ran fw-cutter to set up my Broadcom 4306 PCI wireless card with no apparent difficulty, allocating it eth0. There is an on-board LAN 10/100 card which does not show up and I cannot easily remove.

So if I click on the little icon in the top right and select "connect eth0", it then with no problems appears to connect to eth0. But then the trouble starts. I have configured my own network to death using the Mandriva Control Centre and I was convinced that I have got the right settings having had no difficulty with the XP laptop I am currently using to type this message. I have a range of IP addresses which includes the static one which I have allocated the subject PC, and I am running a WPA-PSK secured system. It is here that I fear I may be in deep water. The WPA settings on my router are TKIP.

But when I run iwconfig from the Mandriva COntrol Centre it tells me that my Security mode is Open. I tried to edit this from the Control Centre using gedit and he ifcfg-eth0 file, but changing "open" for "tkip" has no effect, or didn't. I may be editing the wrong file of course. The other thought I had was that the encryption key needs some sort of translation, but as this seems to work on my other machine, this seems unlikely.

When I reboot, the network indicator (top right) tells me that I "do not have any configured Internet connection..." and invites me to configure everything again. I wonder if perhaps my desired configuration is not "set" in some way. When I do reiterate the configuration, the network applet says that the Network is up on eth0 and cites the correct IP address and Gateway, but then when I attempt to connect to my (visible) network, it says it's connecting and then tells me that the network is down. I don't seem to get both ends connected at the same time.

If I try to run a DHCP setup, which my router can handle, the network applet won't connect to eth0 at all.

I am rather running out of ideas here, and I feel so near to sorting this problem that I do not wish to give up, so I would be grateful for any advice.

In your message, you state that:

"The WPA settings on my router are TKIP".

Would it be possible to change the WPA settings of your router so it matches the one in your PC?

I am using Gentoo (and used Mandriva before), so the configuration files may be different and located in different places. Nevertheless, I believe this page may be of use if you are using wpa_supplicant or wireless-tools as your wireless network. You can also have a look at the other pages as it has very useful network information.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...?part=4&chap=4

Many thanks for this. I have read the stuff on the link I will try it out this evening.

Last night I set up a wireless network to an acer pc running suse10 and there appears to be three things you need to get lined up.

First your Linux installation needs to see the Wireless card or wireless hardware. The indication that this is working may be an indicating light on the front of your laptop.

On your wireless router you can generally set permit or deny on MAC addresses, and on this page is a facility to see active MAC addresses. There is normally a password protected web access to your wireless router. The wireless network will have a name, which you are able to see in Windows, but which I had to enter in Linux, for the wireless card to consider joining that network.

Next you have to get the communications privacy layer right. WPA-PSK in Linux with the same shared key, corresponds to WPA Personal security mode, WPA algorithm TKIP on my router. from ifconfig in Linux you can get the MAC address and you should set it in the permitted MAC addresses or indeed see it show up in the active MAC addresses.

Trust this is of some small assistance

Regards

Keith

I apologise if I have misread your post, which I think I might have cos the solution seems easy.

When you set up your wireless connection via MCC, there is an option to select WPA-PSK as your encryption type - I can't see why you'd need to hand edit any configuration files.

From MCC go to Network & Internet, then Set up a new network interface, and on about the third screen along from there it will ask you about encryption. There's a little drop down box where you can select WPA Pre-Shared Key.

It should eventually ask you to install the wpa-supplicant package if you haven't already done so and bob's your uncle.

My wireless uses WPA-PSK (TKIP) and Mandriva is the only distro I've tried that doesn't need endless mucking around to get WPA working. From memory, Ubuntu needed lots of fiddling about with configuration files to get WPA enabled, but Mandy doesn't.

Again, I apologise if I've misread your post and you've been through all of this.