Wireless Stopped Working on Laptop
 

Hello.

I'm running Slack 12 on a Thinkpad T60 and my wireless has stopped connecting to my wireless network at home. I'm using wicd for network management and it was working up until yesterday. I don't know what to do to track down the problem, so I'm looking for advice to do so.

Other wireless devices in the house can still connect, so I don't believe my router is the problem.

Thanks.

Hi statguy,

well, finding out what the problem is:
which encryption does your wireless network have?
are you using wpa_supplicant?
which wlan-card does the laptop have?
is the module loaded?
which output do you get with "iwconfig" and which output with "ifconfig"?
If you try these commands please post any errormessages.

Markus

Hello

try ifconfig wlan0 up

or

ifconfig eth1 up (It depends which is the name of your wireless device) Try "ifconfig" to
see the name of your wireless device. If the name is wlan0, than try

iwlist wlan0 scan

for scanning your wireless network. And write how output do you get.

OK. Just to be clear, everything was working fine earlier this week. The wireless card has an Atheros chipset.

I am using WEP encryption. Tonight when I booted, it connected, but after a couple seconds, it stopped routing me. Here is output from the other commends.

BTW, this was run when connected on my eth0 (wired port).

I hope this is a useful starting point.

For how long do you stay connected if you do the following?

The iwconfig line is the one that will configure your wlan0 card to get access from your router; those parameters can be obtained in a "# iwlist wlan0 scan". The "dhcpcd wlan0" line is supposing you have a dynamic-IP assinged by the router.

I'm asking this because at work I have 3 routers for wireless connection and none of them is very fond of wicd (don't know why), so the above procedure does the job to get me connected to the internet. I've also noticed that wpa_supplicant is not very stable (in terms of connection) when we're talking about WEP keys, but can't say if this is for sure - it's just my experience.

Hello statguy,

what looks odd to me is that according to the output of iwconfig you're not associated to the accesspoint, but ifconfig shows a proper IP-configuration.
Are you using DHCP?you mean iwconfig? otherwise it would be much more odd.

I've found some threads here at the forums where people had problems with wicd or (more exactly) had problems with their wireless connection when using wicd (which doesn't say that wicd is the problem). I'd suggest to uninstall wicd and try to establish a connection with only wpa_supplicant (which for me at least with Slackware always worked).
One can run wpa_supplicant with the following command:(for an explanation you may look at the manpage of wpa_supplicant) this will (if it works) establish the authentication at the accesspoint. Afterwards (if using DHCP) you may use in order to get an IP-configuration.

If it doesn't work you may try to get it working without wpa_supplicant but with wicd. As far as I know one wicd is able to connect via WEP without wpa_supplicant.

Markus

markush, I originally ran iwconfig when not connected on the wireless. I tried the commands suggested by rfernandez which also gets a "correct" iwconfig. I was able to authenticate on my router and get an IP, but I could not route to anywhere, including the router itself.

Here is the output from iwconfig (appropriately sanitized) and ifconfig after manually connecting.

I will try an try the wpa_supplicant approach later. It will take some time to figure it out, but right now, I need to get the kids (and myself) some breakfast.