Wi-Fi not working on clean Slackware 14.2 install

cLOWNgOD · 09-10-2016, 04:49 PM

Hi,
I have an IBM T-30 w 2GB or RAM which I just did a clean install of Slackware on. Previously, it had Windows 2000 on which the wireless card (Intel 2915 card) was working fine.

When the system boots, there is a network manager icon in the system tray, which sees my AP and prompts for credentials when I try to connect.

Once I enter the credentials, the laptop appears to connect for about 3-4 seconds but then quickly displays 'Disconnecting' and then "disconnected' on the screen.

I tried editing the '/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf ' file as per the Alien Bob Wiki, but no change.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious?? -Tks.

allend · 09-10-2016, 10:03 PM

When you install Slackware, the root account receives a mail message titled 'Welcome to Linux (Slackware 14.2)!', that can be accessed by typing 'mail' at the command line. That message has advice on the setup of networking, including:

Quote:

If you will be using wireless (or even a wired interface), you might
want to let NetworkManager handle your network connections. This is
a choice during the initial installation, but may also be selected
later by rerunning netconfig, or by setting the startup script
to executable (chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager). When Network
Manager is used to handle connections, a nice interface is provided
to scan for wireless access points and make changes to the network
configuration. This interface runs automatically with KDE or Xfce.
In fluxbox, the nm-applet program will need to be launched. Other
window managers lack a system tray to display nm-applet, so for those
you might want to look at wicd in /extra, which also provides a nice
GUI tool for connecting to wireless (or wired) networks. For window
managers that do not provide a tray for running programs, start
"wicd-client" to make changes. With NetworkManager or wicd, it's
a good idea to remove any existing network configuration in
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf first. This can be done by running netconfig
and setting the machine to use loopback. Then, if you're using
NetworkManager run it a second time and select NetworkManager.

For your connection problem, I suggest to try changing the default DHCP client from dhcpcd to dhclient in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-dhcp-client.conf, as it has been reported that dhcpcd fails with some hardware.