Can't get wifi working, Orinoco on IBM T22 laptop

sharp11 · 10-30-2005, 01:11 PM

Can't get wifi working, Orinoco on IBM T22 laptop

I have a classic Orinoco gold card (rebranded 2Wire) and an old T22. The card works fine under Knoppix livecd, but i've not been able to get it running under Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary). (Haven't upgraded to Breezy bc i can't risk downtime right now -- I'm nowhere near linux expert.)

I can see the drivers in lsmod:

Code:

orinoco_cs              8968  1
orinoco                38284  1 orinoco_cs
hermes                  7936  2 orinoco_cs,orinoco
pcmcia                 21380  5 orinoco_cs
pcmcia_core            53568  3 orinoco_cs,pcmcia,yenta_socket

And dmsg doesn't appear to have any wifi errors:

Code:

eth1: Station identity 001f:0001:0008:002a
eth1: Looks like a Lucent/Agere firmware version 8.42
eth1: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth1: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth1: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth1: MAC address 00:02:2D:B6:0C:59
eth1: Station name "HERMES I"
eth1: ready
eth1: index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 3, io 0x0100-0x013f
eth1: no IPv6 routers present
eth1: no IPv6 routers present
eth1: no IPv6 routers present

Here's my ifconfig (eth0 is my wired connection):

Code:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:03:47:BA:92:25
          inet addr:10.0.1.3  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::203:47ff:feba:9225/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:24239 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:18608 errors:10 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:10
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:21891783 (20.8 MiB)  TX bytes:4728100 (4.5 MiB)

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:2D:B6:0C:59
          inet6 addr: fe80::202:2dff:feb6:c59/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:87 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100

lo [removed from output]

Here's output of trying ifup eth1:

Code:

Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.1
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Listening on LPF/eth1/00:02:2d:b6:0c:59
Sending on   LPF/eth1/00:02:2d:b6:0c:59
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 21
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

Finally, here's my /etc/network/interface:

Code:

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
mapping hotplug
	script grep
	map eth0

# The primary network interface
iface eth0 inet dhcp

iface eth1 inet dhcp
wireless-essid kaimen

auto eth1

auto eth0

2Gnu · 10-30-2005, 10:02 PM

What's the output of:
#iwconfig eth1

sharp11 · 10-30-2005, 10:08 PM

Here's my iwconfig for eth1:

Code:

eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"kaimen"  Nickname:"HERMES I"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.432 GHz  Access Point: 00:30:65:1F:BB:39
          Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=56/92  Signal level=-37 dBm  Noise level=-93 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

2Gnu · 10-31-2005, 12:10 AM

OK, that looks fine. You're associated with the AP and getting a good signal.

Instead of running the ifup script, try dhclient or pump (not sure which on Ubuntu) to pull an IP address.

sharp11 · 10-31-2005, 01:49 AM

Yes, great! dhclient works ... well, sort of. I have connectivity for a while, but then it seems to stop working. Mhrrr. I'm sitting right next to an airport base station... Can you give me any sense of the big picture here? Where should dhclient be getting called ... I don't really have a clue about how to debug this...

2Gnu · 10-31-2005, 09:14 AM

The command ifup isn't really a command, it's a script. Open it up to see what commands it's calling. Not sure how Debian distros save network parameters or where the ifup script is invoked, though. Sorry.

Odd that it stops working. Check /var/log/messages to see if there's any clue of what's happening. Are there a lot of other wireless LANs in near you? Maybe you're too close to the AP (seriously). I've seen folks report that if they are right next to the AP, things don't work. Not likely, but a thought.

sharp11 · 10-31-2005, 12:42 PM

Well, a step closer anyway... is there some way to watch what's actually going on in terms of network traffic?

There's just one network right here, and i'm not physically on top of it... Btw, on ubuntu ifup is a binary -- according to the man, it's a wrapper for low level routines such as ifconfig and route.

Thanks for your help...

2Gnu · 10-31-2005, 05:13 PM

OK, I learned something new. I've not fooled much with Debian. My assumptions about ifup came from SuSE and RH.

I should stick to answering questions about Slackware, I guess.

I suppose you could run Ethereal to see what's happening in terms of data packets, but that seems like using a hammer to swat flies. Maybe someone can suggest a better tool.