I'm stuck and I think it may be something simple that I'm just missing.

I've been fighting with getting wireless to work with my company's network, using eth1, wpa_supplicant with the wext driver. It sort of works but is flaky as hell and I have to unload the module and restart wpa several times before the thing even connects. I have no protection at home and it stays connected most of the time, unless I put multiple networks in the wpa config file. (so I have a work config and home config.)


When I posted about this on the Ubuntu forums website, someone made the comment that if you use wpa you have to use ath0.. so I specified ath0 in the /etc/networks/interfaces file and tried that. The system just gives errors about "no such device" and still tries to bring up eth1, however, when I do specify ath0 all of the wireless stuff in networkmanager starts working like magic.

I didn't get any further responses on Ubuntu so I'm hoping for a clue here. Do I need to do something special to convince my system to attach the wireless device to ath0 rather than eth1?

system info as follows:

dell d820 lattitude
Ubuntu Edgy 6.10
ipw3945 124576 1
ieee80211 35272 1 ipw3945

Firstly, its wrong to say you need to use ath0, because I use eth1 on my Laptop to connect to a WPA WLAN.
What are you using to connect to the WLAN? Are you using the command line or a GUI tool?

Thanks for the response and clarification!

I never could get the GUI to work well (Until I configured ATH0 with wpa)

I'm starting it by way of /etc/network/interfaces:
------------------------------------------------------------
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
pre-up wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dwext -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
post-down killall -q wpa_supplicant
------------------------------------------------------------

for work, my wpa_supplicant.conf:
-------------------------------------------------------------
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ap_scan=2

network={
ssid="LAN25"
scan_ssid=1
stakey=1
proto=RSN
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
pairwise=CCMP
#group=CCMP
group=TKIP
eap=PEAP
phase1="peapver=1"
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
identity="<domain>\<my ms UID>"
password="<mypasswd>"
ca_cert="/usr/local/ssl/mycert.pem"
priority=10
}
---------------------------------------------------------------

Ideally, I would have another network for home, which has no protection (I live in a neighborhood of luddites)

When the system boots, it just tries to connect to the wlan over and over. If I unload the ipw3945 module, kill wpa, then reload ipw3945 it will connect after a couple of tries and I have net connectivity. But then it will drop and start trying to connect again. At home, it stays up pretty solid without dropping but I have to only have that network in the wpa conf file.. otherwise it will thrash between trying to connect to the two networks.

Since it will connect and work (at work) I assume my settings are accurate for authentication and encryption. I can't understand why it is so unstable though. This is a hidden SSID by the way, which is why I have apscan=2.

With the windoze partition, the connection is rock solid. No grief at all.