Wireless Setup

Lacertosum · 06-02-2005, 01:22 AM

YAY! I finally got somewhere after trying to setup up my linux wireless for about 2 months!

I am running on Slackware 10.1 with the 2.6.11.11 kernel for your information.

I got a new D-Link DWL-520 2.4Gz Wirless PCI Adapter revision D2 card (RealTek 8180L chipset). I found a driver at:
here
that peopel seem to have used and gotten to work well with my card. So i downloaded the driver, and transfered from windows over to linux. I followed the read me, and did

Code:

make

followed by

Code:

 ./module_load

and then did some checks to see if it had gone well.
I did:

Code:

 cat /proc/modules

Code:

 dmesg

Code:

ifconfig-a

Code:

cat /proc/interrupts

It all seemed to match what it should according to teh READ ME file

So I then do

Code:

 iwconfig

and it shows wlan0 and shows a little bit of information.
Now I proceed to doing

Code:

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

and then

Code:

 iwlist scan

to find the ESSID.

I now do

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 essid xxxx

(my network connectin name, the same one as on windows which i got from doing iwlist scan)

Now is where I run into trouble while trying to give my WEP key.

I try the following

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 key xxxxxxxxx

(xxxxxxxxx being substitued with my WEP key, my encryption key for network, it is 64 bit)

I get the following error:
Error for wireless request "SET Encode" (8B2A):
SET Failed on device wlan; Operation not supported.

Does anyone know what is causing this?
Here is what iwconfig looks like after doing all of these commands other than setting the WEP key

Quote:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID: "wouters"
Mode: managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point:00:06:25:F2:FF:C3
Bit Rate=11MB/s
Retry:on Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality: 96/100 signal level:-40 dBm Noise level:-252dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

I'm not sure exactly what iwconfig is supposed to look like so im not sure if this is good or not and if im close to getting this wireless to work or not

(sorry if anything is mispelled, I had to write it down on a piece of paper and type it up on windows since i dont have internet on linux)

You can see that it says that the encryption key is off and I do have one.
Does anyone know if i forgot any commands or how to get the WEP key to get registered.

Also, I just wanted to test something, and rebooted teh computer. When i restarted I did iwconfig and noticed that wlan0 was no longer up and iwconfig just shows everythign being down.
Correct me if im wrong on teh following but:
To make sure the driver is loaded upon reboot I need to first do

Code:

modprobe MODULE

(module being the .o file in the driver dir)
and then add the line

Code:

/sbin/modprobe MODULE

to the file /etc/rc.d/rc.modules

and to make sure the wlan0 gets set up on boot i need to add all teh commands I did earlier to set wlan0 up to teh file /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Thanks a ton for your help! I have been trying forever to get this setup, and I ahve finally gotten somewhere.

~lacertosum

EDIT:
I think I might have to do the command

Code:

 dhcpcd wlan0

as well, not sure though.

mjjzf · 06-02-2005, 03:08 AM

Haven't got a clue, but I am listening very hard, since I am going to play around with this, too.

kite · 06-02-2005, 09:13 AM

I cannot tell a lot but it looks like that your wifi card is working and can talk to the wifi AP. Have you tried to paly with the /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless and /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf files? Maybe you set the wrong Encryption key? Or better to set the AP without encryption first to debug step by step.

I use intel ipw2200 b/g card which is working fine here. Following is some output for your reference. You might see that my wifi interface is eth1 instead.

root@aqua:/home/kite# ifconfig
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0E:35:1F:56:0E
inet addr:192.168.1.101 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20e:35ff:fe1f:560e/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:69898 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:60744 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:13761968 (13.1 Mb) TX bytes:6136638 (5.8 Mb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x2000 Memory:c0200000-c0200fff

-----------------------------
root@aqua:/home/kite# iwconfig

eth1 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"routername" Nickname:"aqua"
Mode:Managed Channel:6 Access Point: 00:11:95:71:24:38
Bit Rate=48Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
RTS thr

ff Fragment thr

ff
Encryption key:xxxxxxxxx Security mode

pen Power Management

ff
Link Quality:91/100 Signal level:-38 dBm Noise level:-89 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

------------------------------------

Shade · 06-02-2005, 12:59 PM

"Operation not supported" doesn't sound good. Are you sure the drivers you're using support your mode of encryption?

--Shade

eric.r.turner · 06-02-2005, 01:21 PM

Sounds like a driver issue to me.

One problem I ran into when setting up wireless on my box was that the hotplug system recognized my Netgear MA311 as an Orinoco card. I had to add orinoco_cs, orinoco_pci, and orinoco_plx to /etc/hotplug/blacklist to prevent loading these modules when my system booted.

You can read all about how I set my system up here .

Lacertosum · 06-02-2005, 03:02 PM

well teh weird thing though is that the driver READ ME tells me to use that command to set up the WEP key so its kind of weird that it would tell me to do it , if it didnt support it.. hmmm, so what should I do?

dunric · 06-02-2005, 03:34 PM

Quote:

*IMPORTANT*:
Note that since v 0.8 you have to insmod ieee80211_crypt.ko and ieee80211_crypt_wep.ko before ieee80211.ko !
Also you need crypto API support in your kernel with ARC4 enabled and CRC32 functions in your kernel library!

Did you followed above stated guide from driver's homepage ? Is really ARC4 and CRC32 library built in your kernel or are they loaded as modules ? It's likely the source of your problem. And you can enable encyption with iwconfig wlan0 enc on if not done automa[tg]icaly.

scankyfrank · 06-02-2005, 03:35 PM

i'm not sure if this helps but i'll post it anyway: specify a key.

Lacertosum · 06-02-2005, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by dunric
Is really ARC4 and CRC32 library built in your kernel or are they loaded as modules ? It's likely the source of your problem.

I have no idea.. How do i find this out. I will try the rest of waht you told me also.

killerbob · 06-02-2005, 04:01 PM

The crypto routines aren't enabled by default in the 2.6 kernel configuration you download. You need to go into those options and turn 'em off if you haven't already done it.

(I'm lazy, and turn 'em all on. Easier than trying to find out which ones exactly I actually need.

)

dunric · 06-02-2005, 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lacertosum
I have no idea.. How do i find this out. I will try the rest of waht you told me also.

You probably built your own kernel because even in Slackware-current in testing is 2.6.11.9 version.
Concerning kernel crypto support check your kernel configuration file for following options and rebuild in case they were missing:

CONFIG_CRYPTO_ARC4=y # or m if you wish to build as module
CONFIG_CRC32=y # or m if you wish to build as module

Alternatively you can check running kernel build options in /proc/config.gz or by running <kernel-source-root-path>/scripts/extract-ikconfig but it requires kernel was built with Ikconfig support.
You can also check /proc/crypto.
And

Code:

dmesg | grep ^ieee80211

should output something like ieee80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'WEP'

Lacertosum · 06-03-2005, 09:34 PM

alright thanks dunrick, I will recompile my kernel and choose those two options in make xconfig
howerver that command does not output any information. Not sure if its wrong or not.