ESSID Scanning Doesn't Work Anymore.

acascianelli · 11-15-2005, 02:54 PM

I have the same problem on laptops with different configurations.

1st Laptop
Emachines M5310
Broadcom 802.11g with NDISWrapper 1.2
Ubuntu Breezy 5.10

2nd Laptop
IBM T22
Orinoco Gold 802.11b
Ubuntu Breezy 5.10

At one point, BOTH laptops were able to detect wireless network using a iwlist wlan0 scan command. Now, both laptops cannot. They are still able to connect to a wireless network as long as you provide the ESSID.

The Emachines Linux install is much older, about 2 months. The IBM's install is about 2 weeks old. I have no idea why it worked on both initally and now it stopped...Please help.

Hangdog42 · 11-16-2005, 10:37 AM

Something must have changed on those computers. Did you run an update/upgrade? One thing that immediately leaps to mind is that if you moved from a 2.6.12 or earlier kernel to a 2.6.13 or later kernel, you also have to have an upgrade of wireless tools. Run iwconfig -v and see fi the output lists any version problems.

acascianelli · 11-16-2005, 01:35 PM

Here is the output on my Emachines notebook...

Code:

root@ubuntu:~# iwconfig -v
iwconfig  Wireless-Tools version 28
          Compatible with Wireless Extension v11 to v18.

Kernel    Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v17.

wlan0     Recommend Wireless Extension v0 or later,
          Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v17.

root@ubuntu:~#

Hangdog42 · 11-17-2005, 06:54 AM

OK, that means incompatibility isn't the problem.

So are you simply not able to detect access points with iwlist (is it successfully scanning and just not finding any) or is iwlist throwing an error?