opensuse 10.3 wireless issue on Vostro 1000
 

I am having a strange issue trying to get a wireless device working for a friend. The notebook is a vostro 1000. After spending several hours trying to configure the onboard dell wifi with ndis I finally gave up and had her purchase a USB 802.11 B. I recently set up a compaq with ndiswrapper on opensuse and had no issues whatsoever. I did some research and had her get an Acer Warplink 802.11b with the prism2 chipset. It shows up in yast and is configurable but will not connect to anything. Let me back up here a second and add that everything I had done previously trying to install the ndis for the onboard card was undone. I currently have this wireless USB working on this same system running XP with vmware but can't get the damn thing to work with Opensuse alone.

Some more information. The green light powers on and the device appears in KNetworkManager but is shaded I assume because it isn't actually connected to a network. No matter what configuration I try through YaSt I still cannot get the device to sniff out any networks to connect to and it won't connect to my Network even if I statically configure the device.

If I do an lsusb the device shows up.
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0967:0204 Acer (??) WarpLink 802.11b Adapter --- here it is
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 045e:008c Microsoft Corp. Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 03f0:0f11 Hewlett-Packard
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 058f:9361 Alcor Micro Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

KNetworkManager does give me the option to enable/disable wirless. This seems odd. The compaq notebook I configured awhile back with ndswrapper didn't require me to do any configuration once I installed the driver and the green light came on. The available networks were shown and I didn't have to make any adjustments through yast. The wireless device connected much like it would through windows. Am I missing something or is it possible this wireless USB stick isn't going to work under linux? Some other things I tried after reading some posts here...

sudo ifconfig -a
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:F1:B3:B3:44
inet addr:192.168.2.2 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:5287 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6280 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3812947 (3.6 Mb) TX bytes:1247494 (1.1 Mb)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:262 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:262 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:13556 (13.2 Kb) TX bytes:13556 (13.2 Kb)

vmnet1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:01
inet addr:192.168.174.1 Bcast:192.168.174.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:76 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

vmnet8 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:08
inet addr:192.168.200.1 Bcast:192.168.200.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:76 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
BROADCAST NOTRAILERS MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 no wireless extensions

ifconfig
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:F1:B3:B3:44
inet addr:192.168.2.2 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:6098 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:7281 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4268432 (4.0 Mb) TX bytes:1511844 (1.4 Mb)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:322 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:322 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:16556 (16.1 Kb) TX bytes:16556 (16.1 Kb)

vmnet1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:01
inet addr:192.168.174.1 Bcast:192.168.174.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:78 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

vmnet8 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:56:C0:00:08
inet addr:192.168.200.1 Bcast:192.168.200.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:78 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

iwlist scan

lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1 Interface doesn't support scanning.

vmnet1 Interface doesn't support scanning.

vmnet8 Interface doesn't support scanning.

Any ideas?

Not familiar with the device, but sounds like the firmware might be missing for the device. A lot of non-USB wifi devices will require a firmware load... error messages would seem to indicate detection but not functionality... so I'm taking a guess that a firmware load for the device is needed.

But... it's just a guess.