Author Topic: Setting Up Wifi Problem/questions (Read 11855 times)

Syrae · « **on:** July 08, 2005, 02:55:06 pm »

Okay. I flashed this SL5500 with the 3.5.3 and Hentages. It's all hunky-dory, but I can't figure out how to get the WiFi card to connect.

I have a WEP encrypted adhoc network, and I just can't seem to get the network settings happy. First off, it's confusing to me that there's both a wifi0 and a wlan0 device that are up and happy (my Zaurus is only connected to power at the moment.)

Okay, so I try to set wifi0. I set the mode, the ESSID, the channel, use encrypition with this key, and then set my static TCP/IP stuff. I try to ping another device on my network. It doesn't work, and I discover that the wifi0 device is getting no signal. I cannot stop it, because I get an error message saying it cannot be stopped. I try to configure the wlan0 device the same way as the wifi0 device. It does get a signal. (But it still cannot be stopped or restarted.)

What confuses me is that the signal is 64%, noise is 64%, quality is 0%, and the ESSID in the interface info window (under 802.11b) keeps refreshing every second with some weird set of characters appended onto the ESSID. For example, my ESSID is MYADHOC (very creative, I know.) the ESSID listed in this screen keeps showing the three ESSIDs:
MYADHOC2@
MYADHOCÃ¹e@ÃŒ6
MYADHOCÃ¶Ã¿Â¿Ã”Ã¶Ã¿Â¿Ã”Ã¶Ã¿Â¿Ã–Ã¶Ã¿Ã¿Ã¿Ã¿..

What the heck?

Anyhow, the ping reports no packets are received. The device I'm pinging is three feet away, and they're both away from any big EM producers. Something's up (because I could connect before I flashed) and I'm not entirely sure what's being unfriendly.

CoreDump · « **Reply #1 on:** July 08, 2005, 04:12:02 pm »

As a rule of thumb: Do not mess with "wifi0". Ever.
Trash /etc/network/interfaces or reflash the ROM and only touch the configuration of
"wlan0"

Syrae · « **Reply #2 on:** July 08, 2005, 04:48:08 pm »

Quote

As a rule of thumb: Do not mess with "wifi0". Ever.
Trash /etc/network/interfaces or reflash the ROM and only touch the configuration of
"wlan0"
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87573\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Mkay. I reflashed it, and set up wlan0 to be what it should be. Quality is now at 100%, and the funky ESSID is still happening. Ping reports that "sendto: Network is unreachable" I checked again... it's down. I try to start the interface for wlan0 and get "Starting interface failed." The info returned by iwconfig all looks fine.

Thanks CoreDump for helping. At least my quality is better now.

rrnwexec · « **Reply #3 on:** July 08, 2005, 06:22:58 pm »

Quote

Quote
As a rule of thumb: Do not mess with "wifi0". Ever.
Trash /etc/network/interfaces or reflash the ROM and only touch the configuration of
"wlan0"
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87573\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
Mkay. I reflashed it, and set up wlan0 to be what it should be. Quality is now at 100%, and the funky ESSID is still happening. Ping reports that "sendto: Network is unreachable" I checked again... it's down. I try to start the interface for wlan0 and get "Starting interface failed." The info returned by iwconfig all looks fine.

Thanks CoreDump for helping. At least my quality is better now.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87577\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

From the sounds of it, the settings that relate to WEP are wrong. The opie-networkapplet is notorious for creating bad config files.

My suggestion is that you post your /etc/network/interfaces file here so the net geeks can examine it and help you out. Please sanitize your WEP key in the posting first please. Change it to something different from your real one.

Best Regards,
Randall.

CoreDump · « **Reply #4 on:** July 09, 2005, 11:40:03 am »

The newtork settings work alright, however, they sort-of expect a HEX WEP key, not an ASCIII one.

ASCII keys need to be prefixed with "s:". So if your WEP key is "rootme", you'd enter
"s:rootme" in the network settings, not "rootme".

rrnwexec · « **Reply #5 on:** July 09, 2005, 03:11:36 pm »

Quote

The newtork settings work alright, however, they sort-of expect a HEX WEP key, not an ASCIII one.

ASCII keys need to be prefixed with "s:". So if your WEP key is "rootme", you'd enter
"s:rootme" in the network settings, not "rootme".
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87648\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

The network settings applet is definitely broken under OZ/Opie 3.5.3 on at least the SL-6000L, maybe on other models too.

Syrae · « **Reply #6 on:** July 11, 2005, 12:19:41 pm »

Quote

The newtork settings work alright, however, they sort-of expect a HEX WEP key, not an ASCIII one.

ASCII keys need to be prefixed with "s:". So if your WEP key is "rootme", you'd enter
"s:rootme" in the network settings, not "rootme".
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=87648\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

My key was the equivalent of 1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd12 (but using the real key and not a dummy hex one.) I assumed it wanted a hex key.

I used iwconfig to look at the settings, and they seemed sane enough to me....

Lemme grab the /etc/network/interfaces file...

Syrae · « **Reply #7 on:** July 11, 2005, 12:34:50 pm »

/etc/network/interfaces (Sanitized)

Code: [Select]

# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)
 
# The loopback interface
auto lo wlan0 usbd0
iface lo inet loopback

# Wireless interfaces
iface wlan0 inet static
    gateway 10.1.10.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    address 10.1.10.190
    wireless_key 1234abcd1234abcd1234abcd12 [1]  [2]  [3]  [4] open key [1]
    wireless_channel 1
    wireless_mode Ad-Hoc
    wireless_essid MYADHOC
iface atml0 inet dhcp

# Wired or wireless interfaces
iface eth0 inet dhcp
iface eth1 inet dhcp

# Ethernet/RNDIS gadget (g_ether)
# ... or on host side, usbnet and random hwaddr
iface usb0 inet dhcp

# Zaurus 2.4 Lineo net_fd; obsolete
iface usbd0 inet static
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    address 192.168.129.201

# iPAQ 2.4 mach-sa1100/usb-eth
# (192.168.0.202 is the iPAQ's IP, 192.168.0.200 is the host's IP)
iface usbf inet static
        address 192.168.0.202
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        network 192.168.0.0
        gateway 192.168.0.200

# Bluetooth networking
iface bnep0 inet dhcp

rrnwexec · « **Reply #8 on:** July 12, 2005, 01:08:17 am »

Suggest that you try replacing your #Wireless Interfaces section as follows:

Code: [Select]

# Wireless interfaces
iface wlan0 inet static
        gateway 10.1.10.1
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        address 10.1.10.190
        wireless_essid MYADHOC
        wireless_type wlan-ng
        wireless_mode Ad-Hoc
        wireless_enc on
        wlan_ng_priv_key128 true
        wlan_ng_key0 12:34:ab:cd:12:34:ab:cd:12:34:ab:cd:12
        wlan_ng_authtype opensystem

Please let me know how it goes. Good luck.

Syrae · « **Reply #9 on:** July 12, 2005, 01:32:51 pm »

No dice. No change that I can see either.

Is there any way for me to see if it's working without having to ping the other device? I haven't touched the other device at all since I've gotten connections to it working with the Zaurus earlier, but I keep feeling like it randomly decided to change all its settings. Its wireless has a slightly different setup, and I'm trying to figure out how to make sure its settings are happy as well.

*looks at a few things...* Interesting...

Here's the result of me doing iwconfig on the Z:

Code: [Select]

wifi0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"any"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: 44:44:44:44:44:44
          Bit Rate:2 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"any"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: 44:44:44:44:44:44
          Bit Rate:2 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/92  Signal level=-90 dBm  Noise level=-90 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:5  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:527   Missed beacon:0

It says it's not configured at all... odd...

rrnwexec · « **Reply #10 on:** July 12, 2005, 01:50:07 pm »

Quote

No dice. No change that I can see either.

Is there any way for me to see if it's working without having to ping the other device? I haven't touched the other device at all since I've gotten connections to it working with the Zaurus earlier, but I keep feeling like it randomly decided to change all its settings. Its wireless has a slightly different setup, and I'm trying to figure out how to make sure its settings are happy as well.

*looks at a few things...* Interesting...

<snip>

It says it's not configured at all... odd...
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=88037\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I was under the impression that you were trying to do an Ad-Hoc connection (peer-to-peer). Is that the case?

If not, you will need to change the line that reads:
wireless_mode Ad-Hoc
to
wireless_mode Managed

and you will need to ensure that your ESSID's match.

I'll think this over a bit more, but in the meantime please give it a try.

Syrae · « **Reply #11 on:** July 12, 2005, 01:54:28 pm »

That's what I did try to do... what confused me is that I set things, and then... everything unset themselves back to default. No encryption, wrong frequency, wrong essid, wrong mode, everything. I'm manually updating everything using iwconfig at the moment. I'm going through the man page and changing everything that needs to be changed. I'm down to mode at the moment.

It seems like /etc/network/interfaces didn't stick or get used or something... If I look in the network settings panel on the Z, all the settings are there, but if I look at iwconfig, there is nothing set, so SOMETHING is not coherent here.

Syrae · « **Reply #12 on:** July 12, 2005, 02:08:37 pm »

Mkay... I set it with iwconfig. The results of ifconfig look good. I still can't say hello, though.

I tried restarting the device, and all the settings in iwconfig for wlan0 got wiped out again.

rrnwexec · « **Reply #13 on:** July 12, 2005, 02:34:28 pm »

Quote

Mkay... I set it with iwconfig. The results of ifconfig look good. I still can't say hello, though.

I tried restarting the device, and all the settings in iwconfig for wlan0 got wiped out again.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=88047\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

A couple of suggestions/observations...
The settings that you enter manually using iwconfig won't be retained between restarts.
The Network Settings applet should be avoided. I've seen it trample perfectly good config files.

I'd start by using a text editor to edit /etc/network/interfaces. Then use "ifup wlan0" to bring up and test. Check what happened with iwconfig and ifconfig. If things don't look right, then re-edit the interfaces file, issue "ifdown wlan0" and "ifup wlan0" and repeat...

Keep trying.... and let me know how it goes...

Cheers,
Randall.

Syrae · « **Reply #14 on:** July 12, 2005, 02:44:33 pm »

Okay, I didn't know that iwconfig changes weren't permanent. I'm just trying anything at the moment.

So... what I need to do is figure out the right syntax for the interfaces file because at the moment, it's not recognizing anything that has to do with the wireless as far as I can tell. Is there some good source pertaining to that?

News:

Author Topic: Setting Up Wifi Problem/questions (Read 11855 times)