need help for configuring wifi under OpenSuse 11 [update]

[Marin85]

Here is the output of iwconfig:

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lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wifi0     no wireless extensions.

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"dragwl"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:19:E0:A0:D2:8C
          Bit Rate:1 Mb/s   Tx-Power:8 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=27/70  Signal level=-67 dBm  Noise level=-94 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:682  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

irda0     no wireless extensions.

And here is the output of ifconfig

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ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:7D:D6:7A:F2
          inet6 addr: fe80::219:7dff:fed6:7af2/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST 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:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:36:FF:80:60
          UP BROADCAST 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)
          Interrupt:16

irda0     Link encap:IrLAP  HWaddr f7:2c:37:b5
          UP RUNNING NOARP  MTU:2048  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:8
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:72 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:72 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:4408 (4.3 Kb)  TX bytes:4408 (4.3 Kb)

wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-19-7D-D6-7A-F2-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:3893 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:22411
          TX packets:300 errors:13 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
          RX bytes:459220 (448.4 Kb)  TX bytes:14202 (13.8 Kb)
          Interrupt:17

And here is the output of dhclient ath0

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Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.6
Copyright 2004-2007 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/ath0/00:19:7d:d6:7a:f2
Sending on   LPF/ath0/00:19:7d:d6:7a:f2
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 16
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

I believe the good news is that the card receives association with the AP, the bad news is that´s all Because there is still no actual internet connection working there. In YAST the card is set to DHCP. Scanning is working properly both in konsole and KNetworkManager. The latter can´t establish connection either. I tried disabling eth0, but to no avail. Any hints what I should be looking for/at are greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Marin

EDIT: Looking at the increasing nwid I don´t want to believe that madwfi cannot handle some sort of overtraffic in the channel. This shouldn´t be a problem, right? (Apparently, it´s not an issue under Vista.)

[gongo2k1]

lol, that card is really giving you problems no matter what you try!

[Marin85]

Yes, it´s almost tragicomic and it´s also embarrassing to spam the forum with it anymore If I find any working solution to this, I´ll post back. If that´s my last post here, I might have gone kill myself!


Marin

[rssb]

Are you using the madwifi drivers or the Suse 11.0's ath5k ?

Mine is an atheros, the networks would show up but would not connect ( fail to get an ip ) like your case.

Following this link , I have everything working now.

http://www.susegeek.com/wireless/unable ... nsuse-110/

HTH

[Marin85]

Thanks for your reply and for the link. I have already blacklisted the ath5k driver before installing madwifi. lsmod | grep ath5k has no output in konsole and rmmod ath5k says there is no such module. So I don´t thing the ath5k is here really the problem, but I´ll check that out again.
Also thanks for the link! It´s worth a try, I think I may be doing something wrong in the YaST2 part.

Marin

[rssb]

once you have the madwifi drivers complied and rebooted.

Do a modprobe -a ath_pci, then check if you are able to see the wireless networks on command line.

[Marin85]

Without first configuring the wifi card in YaST2 I´m not able to see the wireless devices in konsole even with the ath_pci module loaded.

Marin

[lightweight]

Try a

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sudo iwlist ath0 scanning

Have you isolated if this is a dhcp client problem or if your card simply can't pass traffic by setting a static ip?

If you do isolate this to dhcp, fwiw on my x60s's Atheros card I sometimes can't get leases when moving around unless I kill the dhclient tied to the interface. I am not suggesting that this is an Atheros specific problem, only that I never did this with Intel 4965 on my x61s (though the Intel tends to disassociate with APs). Anyway, try this, which gracefully kills any dhclients, clears all lease info (the dhcpd server will parse its dhcpd.leases on the client request, anyway), sleeps for a second, then starts a new dhclient. Totally jank and lazy, but a series of steps that work for me when I move around from AP to AP.

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for i in `ps ax |awk '/dhclient/ print $1'`; do sudo kill -15 $i; done; echo "" |sudo tee /var/lib/dhcp3/dhclient.ath0.leases; sleep 5; sudo dhclient ath0

(You could set that as an alias in your .bashrc and if your sudoers are set correctly, only need to use your password/fingerprint once when calling it.)

[Marin85]

Update: I installed yesterday a fresh copy of OpenSuse 11 32bit. Then: compiled madwifi -> installed madwifi -> blacklisted ath5k -> rebooted -> able to see ath0 and wifi0 devices in terminal (without modprobe ath_pci) -> iwlist ath0 scan lists the available networks for a few minutes (but NetworkManager doesn´t see any) -> in a few minutes iwlist ath0 scan output is ath0: no scan results All that was before configuring the network in YaST2.

@lightweight: This could be very well an issue with the dhcp client. I found a post on another forum describing exact the same problem on a ThinkPad with Atheros chipset and suggesting that replacing dhclient with pump solves the porblem. I´m going to try this out when I´m back home and have an ethernet cable.
Also, I don´t actually move around, I have placed my laptop where I get the strongest signal, but I´m going to try killing the dhclient.

Marin

Off topic: I made some research on the ThinkPad Atheros chipsets and it seems that not all ThinkPad a/b/g cards are the same, even though the chipsets are all identified as AR5212 in Linux. So, it could be indeed the card that is not fully supported by madwifi

[lightweight]

two cents: using madwifi 0.9.4 on 2.6.25-2 and need ath_pci loaded, or else my Atheros card becomes unusable.

[Marin85]

I usually modprobe the ath_pci module, but it seems that even without typing this in the terminal the modules ath_pci, ath_hal, wlan and ath_sample are loaded after reboot. At least they show up altogether with lsmod.

Marin

[Marin85]

Sorry to revive somewhat old thread. but here is an

Update: A few weeks ago I found out that Mandriva 2008 Spring edition works flawlessly with my Atheros-based wifi card delivering really very impressive signal strength and ranges! However, updating the driver made it behave buggy. So, my assumption is that my issues with that card under Linux came somehow from the madwifi version which maybe was way to advanced for it or just not really that compatible... Anyway, I´ll be happy if someone could tell what the version of the madwifi driver is that Mandriva 2008 Spring comes with per default, so that I may try it out in other Linux distros (actually, I would stay with Mandriva, but for some reason it didn´t like my ultrabay drive, I guess I should have checked the permissions...)

Thanks

Marin

[GomJabbar]

In what way did Mandriva not work with your ultrabay drive? Are you talking about an optical drive or hard drive? Was Mandriva located on the ultrabay drive?

The file in Main Release is: madwifi-source-0.9.3-3mdv2008.1.noarch.rpm
All the madwifi-kernel drivers in Main Updates are version: 0.9.3.3-5.r3114

[Marin85]

I forgot to mention that the drive was/is a hard disk. I had Mandriva 2008 Spring installed on my primary HD. If I remember correctly, it told me that it could not access the ultrabay HD. That´s why I think I hadn´t set permissions properly. In fact I had moved all my data onto that drive in preparation to abandon windows and move completely to Linux, but to be honest, with this message I got scared not to lose my data as the ultrabay drive was my only backup since the other one had been formatted by Mandriva, so I didn´t try to work out the permissions (at least, that´s my guess why it didn´t work...).

Thanks,

Marin

[Marin85]

As for the ultrabay HD, now when I think again about it, I´m really not sure if it wasn´t indeed an active partition with windows installed on it I don´t know if that would make any difference for Mandriva Linux though... Also, I believe I put it instead of the DVD drive after Mandriva had been completely installed and after a few runs of it. I did this while my ThinkPad was powered off (not rebooting!), but I guess this doesn´t work like in Windows, so that might have been well the reason as well.

[GomJabbar]

I don't remember the details exactly, but you go into MCC (Mandriva Linux Control Center) and under Local disks expert mode, add read/write permissions for all users. You might need to install ntfs-3g as well. You need to reboot for changes to take effect.

http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/NTFS

[Marin85]

Hm, ok, thanks for the information, I will need it the next time I come back to Mandriva

Marin