Wireless won't connect anymore

Matty-J · 06-06-2005, 05:48 PM

Hey all,

I have a PCMCIA card on my laptop with SuSE 9.3. I got it all set up for the internet and it was working fine until the weekend. It was then that I removed the card, packed up and went home for a couple days. I played around with my comp once or twice with no card in, got back to my appartment yesterday, and now it won't connect. The KInternet icon just kinda hangs on the taskbar with the little lightning bolt symbol. It never actually makes a connection or whatever.

Any ideas on what could've happened? I've tried multiple restarts, unplugged and plugged the card back in, and if/iwconfig both seem to report that the card is there and seem normal.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Matty-J

Edit: I can get KInternet to display the connected icon if I first hangup, then select my wireless network from the wireless connection screen, and then dial-in again. However, when I do this and go to Check Connection it says:

Default Route:
Invalide default route:
Cannot read '/proc/net/rout': Success

Name Server
Name server failure:
address lookup does not work

Hopefully someone knows

rarsa · 06-07-2005, 12:33 PM

Have you tried unplugging and plugging again your modem and router?

Do you have ADSL or Cable?

Do you get a dynamic IP address assigned by your provider?

What is you home network topology (what is connected to what)?

It seems that the problem is after the connection leaves your computer. As if you had not reacquired an IP lease from your ISP.

Matty-J · 06-07-2005, 01:33 PM

Hey, thanks for your reply.

I have indeed tried unplugging the wi-fi card, but not the router or modem as every other computer connected, either wireless or ethernet, are still working fine.

It's Cable Internet.

I get my IP via DHCP. It was working fine last week.

My home topology is basically a Star network with Wireless I suppose. Nothing complicated or anything.

Is there any known complications between whatever Gnome uses to manage the connections and Kinternet? I tried logging into Gnome for the first time when I got back from the weekend, and it displayed that I had a connection for a very short time. It then disconnected, and I haven't been on since.

Thanks,

Matt

rarsa · 06-07-2005, 09:34 PM

First of all: I am working blind here as I have not used SuSE, but the following instructions have worked in every other distribution.

Second: You really have me confused. Why does that application "dial-in again." if you are connected to cable through a router?

I will assume that "dial again" was a mistake until you explain otherwise.

So, here are some pointers:

What driver is your card using?

1. Can you see the driver if you execute

Code:

/sbin/lsmod

If you can, go to step 3

2. If you cannot, try uninstalling and reinstalling your card driver

Code:

#check if your driver is correctly installed
/sbin/modprobe -l

#if not, try removing and reinstalling it
/sbin/modprobe -r <yourDriver>
/sbin/depmod
/sbin/modprobe -i <yourDriver>     # or follow the instructions for your particular driver

#Check if you receive any errors with
dmesg

If you see errors in dmesg, post those errors as they are likelly pointing to the culprit.

If you driver is correctly installed and you don't see any errors on dmesg continue with step 3.

3. Can you see your card when you execute

Code:

/sbin/iwconfig

If you cannot see your card, You'll have to ask the next guy because that's as far as I can go without knowing what card or driver you have and without knowing SuSE.

If you can see it try to configure it manually (replace wlan0 with whatever name you see when you execute iwconfig)

Code:

/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 key restricted XXXXXXXXX <-- your wep key
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed <---- or whatever mode your network uses
/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid mynetwork   <--- or whatever essid for your network
/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up
/sbin/dhclient wlan0    #or whatever command to acquire an IP address from your DHCP such as dhcpd

If that does not bring up your network, ask the next guy.

Matty-J · 06-07-2005, 10:28 PM

Thanks for your tip

Dial-In is a KInternet thing. I think it is just a generic word for "connect" haha. It' snot actually using dial-up or anything.

I was able to see the card in both ip/iwconfig, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it to find the nameserver. I got fed up with it, and seeing as I've only had linux installed for 2 weeks or so, I decided to just do a reinstall. Maybe starting from scratch will get me going again.

If not, I guess it's back to XP for me.

Thanks again,

Matt

Savet · 06-08-2005, 03:07 AM

This may be a dumb question, but if you're using encryption, have you tried turning the encryption off and getting a connection that way?

rarsa · 06-08-2005, 08:09 AM

I was going to recommend disabling WEP and broadcasting the essid, but it seems that he can actually see the router and he gets a connection. That would mean that the essid and WEP are correct.

Can you ping by address?

Is your card unable to find the Name server or the DHCP server?

As I said in my e-mail, this is the end of the ride for me for now, I hope you find the answer.

By the way, don't give up just because SuSE. I was installing Novell Desktop 9 yesterday and had a horrible time trying to make my USB mouse work, after that I found that their selection of wireless drivers is pathetic (orinoco and that's it). I was expecting more from a comercial distribution. I want to evaluate that one for my father. I want to recommend him something that he can buy and have support for locally in Mexico.

If you bought it from Novell, go to the novell forums or call them for support.

Alternativelly, there are many other distributions thatyou could try if you don't require them to be commercial.

So, Don't give up.

Matty-J · 06-08-2005, 11:44 AM

Hey,

I don't plan on giving up just yet. I'm not going down without a fight haha. If I can't get suse working I'm gonna try another couple of distros. If by like the 3rd one I'm still struggling, I may just throw in the towel. It's just a little frustrating.

Before I reinstalled, KInternet was saying that the name server lookup was wrong. In my resolve.conf I had the name server of my router entered, and that had been working before the weekend. My un-educated guess is that it had soemthing to do with me playing aroudn with Gnome and installing all of it's components

I don't see why they would interfere, but meh. I liked Gnome a bit better than KDE, so this time around I installed with JUST Gnome. We'll see how this goes *fingers crossed*. Now I just have to wait 4 more hours to get done work so I can go home and play haha.

Thanks for your help everyone. Aren't noobs fun?

Matt