Hi,
I am having trouble with wireless on my fedora 8 installtion on lenovo x60. Everything looks fine, i.e. iwconfig, ifconfig e.t.c. but i cannot get it to route packets. Using dhclient returns a message saying no dhcpoffer from any servers. Setting static route does not seem to help either since i cant even ping the default gateway. What else can I check? With windows, the same wireless networks offer dhcp without any problems. I even added the disable_hw_scan=1 as someone with a problem suggested, but does not help. One strange thing is that I can only use network managger which came from fc8 live cd install.

Please post the output of iwconfig.

Have you properly set up your wireless NIC to match the security settings of your wireless router?

i am not on my laptop right now but can confidently say that it is associated as it should be to wireless ap with very good link quality. security settings are not a problem since the ap is open with no encryption.

iwconfig will tell you if the NIC interface is up and if the NIC is associated with an access point.

You might post what type of wireless NIC you have and which driver you have installed.

I have the intel 3945 and fc8 has the iwl2945 driver. Here is some diagnostic output. Pay close attention to the output of dmesg below. Even though the network is open, i see messages that talk about authentication and deauthentication to AP. I feel that this 'deauthentication' is the problem and I am not sure what it is.

iwconfig output
---------------

wlan0 IEEE 802.11a ESSID:"Columbia University"
Mode:Managed Frequency:5.22 GHz Access Point: 00:13:C3:10:5E:20
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=17 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thr=2352 B
Link Quality=82/100 Signal level=-52 dBm Noise level=-86 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


ifconfig output
---------------
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1C:BF:26:37:FE
inet6 addr: fec0::9:21c:bfff:fe26:37fe/64 Scope:Site
inet6 addr: 2002:a027:f3a1:9:21c:bfff:fe26:37fe/64 Scope:Global
inet6 addr: 2002:a027:fc0f:8:21c:bfff:fe26:37fe/64 Scope:Global
inet6 addr: fec0::8:21c:bfff:fe26:37fe/64 Scope:Site
inet6 addr: 2002:a027:fdf7:8:21c:bfff:fe26:37fe/64 Scope:Global
inet6 addr: 2002:a027:f6a0:8:21c:bfff:fe26:37fe/64 Scope:Global
inet6 addr: 2002:803b:9d69:8:21c:bfff:fe26:37fe/64 Scope:Global
inet6 addr: fe80::21c:bfff:fe26:37fe/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:107468 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:13 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:24194272 (23.0 MiB) TX bytes:1302 (1.2 KiB)




wlan0: authenticated
wlan0: associate with AP 00:13:c3:10:5e:20
wlan0: RX ReassocResp from 00:13:c3:10:5e:20 (capab=0x421 status=0 aid=255)
wlan0: associated
wlan0: CTS protection enabled (BSSID=00:13:c3:10:5e:20)
wlan0: switched to short barker preamble (BSSID=00:13:c3:10:5e:20)
wlan0: WMM queue=2 aci=0 acm=0 aifs=3 cWmin=15 cWmax=1023 burst=0
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
wlan0: disassociate(reason=3)
wlan0: WMM queue=3 aci=1 acm=0 aifs=7 cWmin=15 cWmax=1023 burst=0
wlan0: WMM queue=1 aci=2 acm=0 aifs=2 cWmin=7 cWmax=15 burst=30
wlan0: WMM queue=0 aci=3 acm=0 aifs=2 cWmin=3 cWmax=7 burst=15
wlan0: RX deauthentication from 00:13:c3:10:5e:20 (reason=2)
wlan0: deauthenticated
wlan0: RX deauthentication from 00:13:c3:10:5e:20 (reason=2)
wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:13:c3:10:5e:20
wlan0: RX authentication from 00:13:c3:10:5e:20 (alg=0 transaction=2 status=0)
wlan0: authenticated
wlan0: associate with AP 00:13:c3:10:5e:20
wlan0: RX ReassocResp from 00:13:c3:10:5e:20 (capab=0x421 status=0 aid=3)
wlan0: associated
wlan0: CTS protection enabled (BSSID=00:13:c3:10:5e:20)
wlan0: switched to short barker preamble (BSSID=00:13:c3:10:5e:20)
wlan0: disassociate(reason=3)

I'd say the "Columbia University" access point is looking for a WEP or WPA key that you are not providing. Or this access point has MAC address filtering turned on.

You'll have to determine what type of security, if any, this router is using.

If you can connect to this access point while in Windows using the same computer, you should be able to determine the security settings and key code by booting into Windows and looking at the settings for this access point in Windows. Then you can enter these settings in linux using iwconfig.

that is the strange thing. I know it is an open AP since I am at a conference and everyone can just connect without any settings needed. I am starting to wonder if there is some bug in my driver or something of that kind as I cant figure it out. In windows i absolutely need nothing to connect to wireless networks. On fc8 i have so far not been able to connect to any wireless network anywhere. I havent checked dmesg before, so dont know if the same problem happens with all of them.

Are you sure your DHCP client is being run? I know know nothing about Fedora, but try the following as root: dhclient wlan0

If if doesn't know that command, you'll have to check Fedora docs for the DHCP program they use. It could be that you just are not asking the AP for an IP address.

There should be a configuration file that will allow you to do this automatically whenever you bring the interface up.