Ubuntu 6.10 and wireless networking

Wej

Wej

Wej

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Ok, this is posted after much trawling and trying stuff so I'm getting a bit desperate.

I have an Ubuntu 6.10 install and a belkin 802.11g usb wireless dongle and I'm getting nowhere getting it working. I've read (and I don't know whether this is true) that it's supported 'out of the box' but I can't seem to get it to work.

In networking I have wlan0 and wmaster. I've set wlan0 essid to my wireless router essid and applied the changes, but no network. From terminal I've done the following: -

sudo iwconfig wlan0

This tells me everything is set up correctly *except* the access point, which is 'Not associated. When I do the following: -

sudo iwconfig wlan0 ap auto

It's then shown as 'Invalid'

Some questions: -

1. What is the difference between wlan0 and wmaster? I'm assuming that I should be tinkering with wlan0?

2. Does this usb dongle work out of the box. It's correctly identified in all the relevant places, but do i need the drivers from windows?

3. Do I need to mess about with ndiswrapper, and if so, what do I do?

4. What am I missing?

Someone please help - I need a simple set of steps to get this working as I'm a Linux noob, and these steps need to be based around the fact that I have no networking on the linux machine, so I can't *get* stuff directly. I can of course download onto a windows machine, bung on a cd and transfer across.

What else can I try?
 
You should definitely have a read over at www.ubuntuforums.org, I'm not trying to palm you off but a quick search reveals 48 results for a search on "belkin 802.11g usb".. seems there are people over there who have similar problems :)

Good luck, nearly there :)
 
Try sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid whateveryoursis

That should associate you with an access point the networking gui tends to suck :p .

If wlan0 is showing up correctly in iwconfig it is already setup correctly driver wise just misconfigured.
 
Unfortunately I have been and have made some progress but I'm still stuck, so I'm posting everywhere in the hope that someone rescues me.

I'm so close, it almost hurts - the wireless usb dongle is working and I can see the access point, I just can't connect to it!
 
iwconfig: -

lo No wireless extension

eth0 No wireless extension

eth1 No wireless extension

wmaster0 IEEE 802.11g Frequency: 2.412 GHz
RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID "conexant"
Mode: Managed Frequency: 2412 GHz Access Point: Not associated
RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B

sit0 No wireless extension


There is no output from sudo ifconfig wlan0 up, but if I do iwconfig wlan0 afterwards the access point is still not associated.

edit:

If after this I do sudo iwconfig wlan0 ap auto and then view the information again, I get access point invalid.

Should I try with the actual access point mac address, or should this not be necessary?
 
Very odd, it should associate with the AP once the ESSID is set correctly. You could try messing around with channel/mac ip of the AP.

Does your AP even show up in iwlist wlan0 scan ?
 
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Yes, the iwlist wlan0 scan shows the AP and I've even tried manually specifying the mac address using: -

sudo iwconfig wlan0 ap <access_point_mac_address>

but when I do iwconfig wlan0 it says access point is invalid.

I've got to be missing something fundamental and obvious.

Here's the result of sudo iwlist wlan0 scan (relevant stuff): -

Cell 01 - Address 00:0A:E9:02:1F:A6
ESSID:"conexant"
Mode: Master
Frequency: 2.437 GHz
Encryption key: off

And here's sudo iwconfig wlan0 (again, relevant stuff): -

ESSID:"conexant"
Mode: Managed
Frequency: 2.412 GHz
Access point: Not associated
RTS thr: off
Fragment thr: 2346 B
Encryption key: off

Ok, notice the difference in frequency - this is on bootup, I have changed this to be the same but with no avail.

Oh, and a final thing sudo dhclient wlan0 gives (at the end of the output): -

No DHCPOFFERS received
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping
 
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Yeah dhcpd won't be able to aquire an ip before you are associated with the access point.

Strange problem, you should try doing some more digging with more verbose debug output and see if you can see why its failing to associate.

Anything in /var/log/messages when you try to associate using iwconfig wlan0 essid whatever?

I got a feeling that the driver your trying to use is screwed, and you should try install the one off the cd with ndiswrapper manually.
 
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Una said:
Yeah dhcpd won't be able to aquire an ip before you are associated with the access point.

Strange problem, you should try doing some more digging with more verbose debug output and see if you can see why its failing to associate.

Anything in /var/log/messages when you try to associate using iwconfig wlan0 essid whatever?

I got a feeling that the driver your trying to use is screwed, and you should try install the one off the cd with ndiswrapper manually.
Click to expand...

If this is the case, can you give me an idea of how to do this? I installed from an Ubuntu 6.10 live cd and I understand that ndiswrapper is pre-loaded in 6.10...
 
I've tried and tested some USB wireless adapters on my laptop running the latest Ubuntu. Never had a problem..

I'm a KDE guy so i use knetworkmanager. Detects and connects flawlessly to my AP with and without both types of encryption.
 
Barrington said:
I've tried and tested some USB wireless adapters on my laptop running the latest Ubuntu. Never had a problem..

I'm a KDE guy so i use knetworkmanager. Detects and connects flawlessly to my AP with and without both types of encryption.
Click to expand...

Is it possible to install KDE without internet connection?
 
Without reading up about KDE just now, I can only assume its provided on the install CD - but obviously not the up to date version.

I've never actually tried to install a program without a net connection.. always used repositories to check for the latest version of the program i'm after.

Edit: Turns out you might need to get your hands on a Kubuntu CD to install KDE without a net connection. Look Here
 
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Right, I'm downloading kubuntu 6.10 and seeing if I can do anything in the IDE once this has been installed....
 
You can try the GUI but its just a frontend for what you are doing at the command line, so I very much doubt it will make any difference...

To install the driver first find out what chipset the usb stick is using with 'lsusb'. Then read up on the ndiswrapper wiki for that chipset and follow the instructions there.
 
YES!!!!!

Finally got it working through ndiswrapper with the XP drivers

One final question - how do I get these settings written away so it works after I reboot?
 
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