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Old 07-14-2004, 04:06 AM   #1
ElmPie
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Wireless nic - Debian


I have a problem setting up my wireless PCI network card with Debian Sarge ( 2.4.25-1-386).

I have installed ndiswrapper and installed the drivers I needed.

ndiswrapper -l gives me :
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 present

I disabled all security (WEP, WPA-PSK) at the access point.

I'm not able to get a essid while it is being broadcasted by my access point.

iwlist wlan0 scanning :
wlan0 No scan results

iwconfig wlan0:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Bit Rate:54Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-57 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

ifconfig wlan0:

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:41:64:AD:7F
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:45 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:15390 (15.0 KiB)
Interrupt:17 Memory:da000000-da001fff


I tried setting the essid manually but this only seems to work when I'm in auto mode and doesn't really solve anything.

The wireless led on my router doesn't blink even once when I try dhclient wlan0

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks!
 
Old 07-14-2004, 08:25 AM   #2
Hangdog42
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Quote:
I tried setting the essid manually but this only seems to work when I'm in auto mode and doesn't really solve anything.
If it is any consolation, this is a known issue with Broadcom based cards. I've had decent luck setting up my card from my /etc/rc.d local file, but I don't rely on iwlist to find the SSID, I just set it for my home network using iwconfig.

Quote:
The wireless led on my router doesn't blink even once when I try dhclient wlan0
Dhclient isn't going to work unless you have connected to your WAP, and that isn't going to happen until you get your ssid set. Try setting up your card in a startup script (like rc.local) and see if that works.
 
Old 07-14-2004, 11:06 AM   #3
ElmPie
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Alright I tried as you said setting everything manually at boot time.

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
up iwconfig wlan0 mode Auto
up iwconfig wlan0 essid ElmPie

This really doesn't do anything except trying to get an IP address at boot time which doesn't work.

I also tried giving it an IP and essid at boot time

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
address 192.168.254.20
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.254.0
broadcast 192.168.254.255
up iwconfig wlan0 mode Auto
up iwconfig wlan0 essid ElmPie

When I do this iwconfig gives me this :

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"ElmPie"
Mode:Auto Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: 66:F1:74:30:2D:17
Bit Rate:54Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-57 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

I wonder where he gets that Access Point MAC address because its not correct either.

and

ifconfig this :

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:41:64:AD:7F
inet addr:192.168.254.20 Bcast:192.168.254.255 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:5 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 KiB)
Interrupt:17 Memory:da000000-da001fff

but all of this doesn't make it work

I'm almost out of ideas ;(
 
Old 07-14-2004, 03:00 PM   #4
Hangdog42
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I have no idea why that doesn't work. It sure looks like it is set up properly. What do you mean by doesn't work? What is the behavior you are seeing? Can you ping by name? By IP adddress?

The only other setting the comes to mind is your gateway. If you look at the output of route -n, is your router's IP address set as the gateway?
 
Old 07-14-2004, 03:44 PM   #5
ElmPie
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Quote:
Originally posted by Hangdog42
I have no idea why that doesn't work. It sure looks like it is set up properly. What do you mean by doesn't work? What is the behavior you are seeing? Can you ping by name? By IP adddress?

The only other setting the comes to mind is your gateway. If you look at the output of route -n, is your router's IP address set as the gateway?
The behavior I see is like it is set up properly but it doesn't succeed in establishing any data transfer with the Wirelss Access Point. DHCP doesn't work, iwlist doesn't work and even pinging any host on the network by IP address doesn't work (the led on the router isn't blinking, so that indicates no data transfer at all, it doesn't even try).

Does anyone has any hints how I would be able to trace whats going on? Maybe with iwevent(never used it)?

Thanks for your time!
 
Old 07-14-2004, 06:34 PM   #6
andrewdodsworth
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Well I've also got a Broadcom based wireless card (BCM94306 chipset) that uses the same driver. However, I set it up with ESSID broadcast turned off at the AP and 128 bit WEP on. Therefore I set the ESSID and key initially using iwconfig and then put it all in the ifcfg-wlan0 file.

I'm afraid I don't want to take off the encryption to see if I can get it to work in your configuration but from your posts and my (limited) experience it looks as though ndiswrapper is installed correctly so you should be able to get it working. Try putting a WEP key back on the AP and then try iwconfig ESSID "<your_essid>" key "<your_hexkey>" to see if iwconfig can then correctly talk to the AP.

If that works then dhcpcd wlan0 should set everything up.

If that lot doesn't work then try rmmod ndiswrapper followed by insmod ndiswrapper. I had something in the wrong order in the boot sequence which made it incapable of working initially although ndiswrapper -l showed bcmwl5 present. Removing ndiswrapper and then putting it back got it to work. If that is the case you then need to find out what's going wrong in the initial boot process (for me my card is pcmcia and the network scripts were being called before the pcmcia scripts so the wireless card was never going to boot up!).

I had a look at iwevent but I think it only tells you of changes in ESSID etc that the card knows about. I don't think that's going to help you much in your situation as it's not the card configuration you want to know about it's the wireless traffic (or lack of it).

{edited} Changed my mind! Run iwevent in a separate console window and it will tell you if something else is changing your card config as well as what you are doing so it may be of some help!

Last edited by andrewdodsworth; 07-14-2004 at 06:51 PM.
 
Old 08-02-2004, 05:38 PM   #7
xsystemx69
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Question Access point?

I am using NDISwrapper with WMP54GS in Suse 9.1

everything is configured perfectly with ifconfig & iwconfig.
I am using 64 bit encription but I entered the key using iwconfig so that should be ok too.

But I dont know much about what a Access point is/does. Now i get weird results, could anyone tell me what they mean? here's the results I get:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

root > iwlist bitrate
4 available bit-rates:
1MB/s, 2MB/s, 5.5 Mb/s, 11 MB/s , Current Bit Rate = 125 MB/s
root > iwlist encryption
2 Key sizes: 40, 104 bits
4 Key available:
{1} : 1111-1111-11 (40 bits), {2} : 1111-1111-11 (40 bits), {3} : 1111-1111-11 (40 bits),
{4} : 1111-1111-11 (40 bits) , Current Transmit Key {0}, Security mode : restricted

root > iwlist accesspoints
wlan0 - Interface doesn't have a list of Peers/Access-Points.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My hardware information:
NIC-WMP54GS - Wireless-G PCI Adapter with SpeedBooster
Router-WRT54GS - Wireless-G Broadband Router with SpeedBooster v1.0

OS - Suse 9.1
Long live the penguin
 
Old 08-02-2004, 06:21 PM   #8
Hangdog42
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I'm not sure....Are you asking a question? By the way, if you do have a question, it is usually best to start a new thread rather than digging up an old one. People tend to pay more attention to new threads.

If you are trying to get a list of access points your computer can see try iwlist wlan0 scan.
 
  


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