madwifi on a Toshiba M35X-S163

tvynr · 01-06-2007, 02:54 PM

First, the obligatory wireless tools dumps:

iwconfig ath0:

Code:

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"shofar"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:1 Mb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3  
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=49/94  Signal level=-46 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:66294  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

iwlist ath0 scan:

Code:

ath0      Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:E0:98:D4:51:5F
                    ESSID:"shofar"
                    Mode:Master
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality=52/94  Signal level=-43 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
                    Encryption key:off
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 22 Mb/s
                              6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
                              36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=200

Notice how the ath0 device is configured with the ESSID "shofar" and how that ESSID shows up under the scan, but yet the wireless device does not associate with the AP in question. I really have no idea why this is happening. We set up this laptop using a different AP for tests and it worked just fine, but now it doesn't seem to want to play ball. Could it be the AP? This laptop has successfully connected to the AP before under a different "operating system" which shall remain unnamed, so it's not a MAC address list or anything.

So I tried manually setting the access point via "iwconfig ath0 ap <blarg>" and that didn't improve things at all. Does anyone have any ideas?

Cheers!

slzckboy · 01-06-2007, 04:49 PM

is the access point using wep,wpa or is it just open?

i.e if it is wep have you configured the client to use the right access key?

Quakeboy02 · 01-06-2007, 05:25 PM

Could you list the commands you've tried and in the order you tried them? IOW, could you put up a simple script, and actually run the script first to make sure it doesn't work? It's sometimes hard to figure out what the poster has actually done just by looking at the end result.

Try this script (as root/sudo, of course) and see what happens:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/ifconfig ath0 down
/sbin/iwconfig ath0 essid shofar channel 6 ap any 
/sbin/iwconfig ath0 mode Managed txpower auto rate 11M auto sens -80
/sbin/ifconfig ath0 up

tvynr · 01-07-2007, 01:56 PM

Sorry for the delay; I'm troubleshooting this problem on someone else's behalf and the laptop wasn't available for a bit.

slzckboy: I should clarify that no encryption is being used at the moment; we turned it off to eliminate that variable for the time being.

Quakeboy02: I tried the script you had above; no change in behavior. I'm not exactly certain of the commands and the order in which I tried them, but your script was tried after a reboot, so it should've been a clean environment.

We're going to test the laptop on the known working access point later to confirm that the configuration hasn't been changed in a way I don't know about, but I anticipate it working fine on that AP (a little Linksys unit).

Thanks for your help!

slzckboy · 01-07-2007, 02:12 PM

ok..
so assuming that the layer 1/2 stuff is ok what about layer 3 i.e IP?
what does ifconfig ath0 show?
what subnet does the access point use for its lan ?
is the ip address shown from ifconfig in that subnet?

Is the linksys unit running a dhcp server?

if so
do as root

Code:

dhcpcd ath0