Wireless config jumping channels?
 

Hi, guys. I must admit I'm quite a newbie when it comes to Linux, but this seems like bizarre behavior any way you cut it. I've got a laptop running Slackware 9.0 with a Linksys WPC11 v.2 Wireless network card in PCMCIA. I've sort of managed to get it up and working. I insert the PCMCIA card, and run "ifconfig eth0 up", then "iwconfig eth0". iwconfig shows the proper set up, with correct ESSID and Frequency, and a link quality of 90/92 or so. But the light on my card was still blinking instead of steady, so I tried some stuff and iwconfig again. The long and short of it is that my card seems to be jumping to different channels. I can run iwconfig, and it'll have the right setup, then run it again two seconds later, and it's off the network, then two seconds later, the setup is correct again. What could cause this behavior? Thanks for any help.

Depends on you setup. I'm not familiar with slackware, but wireless cards can be managed in different ways. If you want the card always to use the same channel you're goig to haveto configure it that way. On a RH distro that stuff is in /etc/pcmcia/network-scripts. Not sure where it would be on slackware.

Also, it depends on the setup of your wireless base station. You shoul be abel to st it to accept only connections on a fixed channel - if you do so (and your linux machine is like in auto-managed mode) it will alwasy connect on that channel.

Tom

Well, the router's already set up for a fixed channel, and the wireless card will find that channel at first, then jump off of it after about 1 second. I set up the wireless.opts file to have it stay on the right frequency, and told it what the ESSID is, but even with all the info, it still jumps around on the frequency. Sometimes 2.437G (which is the correct one, and it will automatically detect the ESSID when it hits this one, when I don't have it hard coded in), sometime 2.552G, and others. I've been searching for an answer all day and can't find a thing!

--Misha

Output from iwconfig and ifconfig if anybody has any ideas:

iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"linksys" Nickname:"Prism I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437Ghz Access Point: 00:06:25:7F:71:D1
Bit Rate=2Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key: off
Power Management:off
Link Quality 60/92 Signal level:-23 dBm Noise level: -137 dBm
Rx incalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


ifconfig

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:06:25:0A:ED:76
UP BROADCAST RUNNIN MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:532 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:2261 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:88610 (86.5 Kb) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100

Note that iwconfig sometimes looks like this (without me changing any settings)

eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"" Nickname:"Prism I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.422Ghz Access Point: 44:44:44:44:44:44
Bit Rate=2Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key: off
Power Management:off
Link Quality 0/92 Signal level:-68 dBm Noise level: -122 dBm
Rx incalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

It just occured to me that ifconfig is reporting Interrupt 3. Is this a conflict with a serial port IRQ, or is that something else?

Thought I'd post my solution, just in case anyone stumbles upon this thread. I ended up switching from the Orinoco drivers to the wlan drivers and had no trouble getting it to work. If you need more details, I can provide them by email!

--Misha

Misha I am trying to install an internall prism wlan card on my slackware 9 install but I am hitting dead ends if you could help me that would be great. i have the latest kernel but can't find the right drivers for it. Is there a howto anywhere that you can point me to or did you just use the readme files?

thanks Lethario

mailto:c.gibbs@iris.ocn.ne.jp:confused:

I read howtos, checked the forums, tried newsgroups. Finally got it working, mainly thanks to a kind-hearted soul in alt.os.linux.slackware. Try downloading the wlan drivers from ftp://ftp.linux-wlan.org/pub/linux-wlan-ng/ . I opted for 0.2.0 instead of one of the 0.2.1 pre-releases. If your internal card is prism based, they should work for you to. You might also try the /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Wireless-HOWTO included with Slack 9. Good luck, and let me know if you need any other help!
--Misha

Thanks I also downloaded the drivers but I have some strange issuse with not being able to find directories in my slackware 9 install I installed all the wlan divers and did the configs but when i tried to restart the pcmcia card I couldn't find the "/etc/rc.d/init.d/ pcmcia restart" file any way now I am thinking that maybe I need to install the pcmcia-cs package but I don't know where to download it from. any way thanks again.
this forum rules

So I am downloading the pcmcia-cs drivers and other packages that I think that I am going to need for things. and I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks for all your help..

Lethario

You can find the newest pcmcia cardservices files as pcmcis-cs.sourceforge.net . I donwloaded and installed the newest ones when I set up my card, but if yours is internal, this shouldn't matter. When you install the wlan drivers, you have to be sure to install the pci one (I'm assuming it's a pci card). Also, the pcmcia script on Slack 9 is /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia, so you'd actually have to type "/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia restart", though again I'm not sure if this would help at all with a pci wireless setup. I'm very new to linux and don't know how it would handle an internal card, though you should be able to find some discussions on the subject somewhere... Hope this helps!

--Misha