[SOLVED] iwconfig finds no wireless extensions, yet my Edimax EW-7811un can connect to internet
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iwconfig finds no wireless extensions, yet my Edimax EW-7811un can connect to internet
Hello,
I am running 4.4.6-gentoo on my desktop computer. I use a Edimax EW-7811un in order to connect to our router. However, there are times when my network randomly disconnects and I have to kill dhcpcd and rerun it in order to reach the internet again. This doesn't happen on my Windows 7 boot, so I know it's nothing to do with the hardware or my connection strength. Even stranger is although using dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant works, iwconfig cannot find a wireless extension.
I was wondering if anyone had a similar problem, and if so, if they managed to find a solution to this behaviour.
Cheers!
(P.S. I apologize if I have omitted any information required for context. This is my first time posting for help on a forum)
The contents of wpa_supplicant.conf would be interesting. Some distros have it in /etc/, others in /etc/wpa_supplicant/. Could we see it? Hide your passwords, of course.
Also while you're online, check & post the output of
Code:
ifconfig -a
The error about 'no wireless extensions' may relate to a particular interface, not the box in general.
I bought that online last year for maybe $9. As I recall I had to add in the driver for it. Did Gentoo supply the driver or did you add one in? Mine under Debian works flawless so far.
Also there might be some logs located that might offer clues. Usually under /var someplace.
AFAIK, even if you are using something such as Portage/Emerge/etc., there are still what could be termed, package dependencies.
In other words, no matter how "magical"/helpful a tool like Portage may seem, there can still be problems with what some Human specified, or neglected to specify, as a dependency between packages. So an install of software may seem to work flawlessly, but something that is needed by the software that was installed, might actually be missing.
I once installed some software to handle a particular manufacturer's video hardware; during the install of software I'll just call A, there were dependencies included in A, on B and C; so all three things were installed.
Given the details of the situation, it should have been possible to keep B and C installed for other purposes, but remove A; when I tried that, things "broke". I discovered that there was actually a library bundled with A, which was needed by B and C, but no one had specified that B and C depend on A.
If nothing else solves the problem, you might want to check dependencies for whatever "wireless extension" it is, about which iwconfig is complaining.
I activate my wireless network using the shell script below (to which I have added output files for debugging):
Code:
#output ifconfig -a before loading driver
ifconfig -a > ifconfig1.txt;
#load driver
modprobe rtl8192cu >;
sleep 2;
#output ifconfig -a after driver has been loaded
ifconfig -a > ifconfig2.txt;
#run wpa_supplicant and send debugging output to wpa_supplicant.txt
wpa_supplicant -B -i wlp0s20u2 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -f wpa_supplicant.txt;
sleep 4;
#output ifconfig -a after wpa_supplicant has been running for 4 seconds
ifconfig -a > ifconfig3.txt;
#run dhcpcd on wireless interface
dhcpcd wlp0s20u2;
#
ifconfig -a > ifconfig4.txt;
Here's the output of ifconfig1.txt (before driver is loaded):
I've also seen through the wpa_supplicant log that the adapter is able to scan for other wireless networks.
I do have the driver compiled and loaded for my system, so I have no idea how to fix this. I'm going to try reinstalling the driver on the cd that came with the adapter and update if anything changes about the situation. :\
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