OZ newbie having trouble with Buffalo WiFi

[tawalker]

I\'ve been using tkcROM v1 with my 5500 for a while now, but after much deliberation I finally took the plunge last night and flashed the machine with OZ 3.2. I mainly changed to OZ because I want to sync the Z with Qtopia Desktop and Evolution on my RH Linux PC over my wireless LAN, which wasn\'t possible with tkcROM.

Already, I\'ve run into problems getting my Buffalo WLI2-CF-S11WiFi card to work with OZ. I had the same problem with tkcROM, and found this post which helped.

The problem is, I don\'t see the tray icon for the network, which I used to get with tkcROM. The link light on the card stays on as if it\'s connected, but I can\'t ping the network or anything. Can anyone suggest where I go from here?

(BTW: I\'m using WEP on my WLAN, and will try the advice in this question in the OZ FAQ.)

Many thanks,
Tim

P.S. Does anyone know where I can get the \"Crystal\" blue wallpaper image, as seen on the  SL-5500 screenshots on the Opie Web site? I haven\'t seen it in the backgrounds collection on the site, but thought it looked pretty good.

[lardman]

Last things first, the background image comes with opie 1.x, which means you\'ll either have toi get someone to email it to you, mount the initrd.bin for 3.3.5 (possibly, not sure haven\'t used it in a long time?) or definitely 3.3.6pre1, or just flash to a later ROM (though 3.2 is stable, 3.3.6pre1 was completely stable for me and faster and a later kernel, etc., but will require some more effort on your part as the compat libs are needed - see how you go and what you think you\'re up to doing).

If you go to the Settings page and select Launcher you can specify which icons appear on the toolbar. WiFi may be turned off.


Simon

[tawalker]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for coming back so quickly. I may look into a later version of OZ, though as you may have gathered I\'m still not that confident with really \"rolling up my sleeves\" with Linux. I can probably do without the Crystal background for now

Looking at the Launcher settings, there are only six entries on the Taskbar tab: Battery, Cardmon, Clipboard, Clock, Irda and Volume. No sign of WiFi - I suspect my Buffalo card still isn\'t being recognised properly (or it\'s not binding to the Ethernet/WiFi interface), though it could just be my unfamiliarity with OZ.

Also, the Settings/Network applet looks totally different from tkcROM\'s. Silly question: is it possible to have multiple profiles in OZ (i.e. for different wireless LANs), as you could in tkc?

(BTW, I\'ll try the WEP bug workround from the OZ FAQ, when I get home this evening - that may help too.)

Thanks again,
Tim

[lardman]

If it\'s not in the list (in Launcher) then you need to install it.

I don\'t know about multiple profiles, I only every use one.


Si

[tawalker]

Most of the time, I would only ever need to use one WLAN profile myself (i.e. home), so having multiple profiles doesn\'t bother me much at this stage.

Where would I need to install the WiFi support from? According to the Packages applet, it looks like there are already WiFi-related packages installed, so I\'m not quite sure what I need to add, or from where.

Or maybe I\'ll just get hold of OZ 3.3.5 and flash that - might be easier

Thanks again for the help!

Tim

[lardman]

Hmm, perhaps OZ3.2 didn\'t have a wireless applet. You might be ablke to get the one from the OZ 3.3.5 feed to work: http://www.openzaurus.org/official/3.3.5/c...t_1.0.3_arm.ipk but the libs may have changed and it may not work.

It might be worth upgrading to 3.3.5 just for the speed improvements of the later kernel, etc.


Si

[tawalker]

I decided to reflash with OZ 3.3.5. The interface looks much more polished, and I\'m definitely pleased with the revised Liquid theme. (My Linux PC at home has a similar theme set up - maybe I\'ve just got Mac OS X envy? :-) )

More importantly, I\'m making progress with WiFi. The good news is that the Z seems to be \"locking onto\" my access point - I can see the signal strength, MAC address of the AP, and so on.

The bad news: I can\'t actually get an IP address from the AP. It\'s unlikely to be a MAC address filtering problem, as the WiFi card is the same as before; similarly, DHCP seems to be set up on the Z.

I suspect WEP might be the culprit, especially if the bug mentioned here is still present in the Network applet in OZ 3.3.5. I tried the fix they suggested, but got an error message saying the key was too long (I use the strongest WEP type - 128-bit?).

Any thoughts? (Thanks for your help so far  )

Tim

[lardman]

I can\'t really help I\'m afraid.

Have you tried without WEP (this may be difficult to change, I don\'t know, but it made my life easier when I first tried to connect to my WinXP machine)?


Si

[tawalker]

I should\'ve thought of turning off WEP myself - thanks for the idea!

Anyway, I turned off WEP (I use 128-bit) on the AP, and hey presto - my Z gets an IP address. I try generating a new WEP key, setting the new key on the AP and entering it into the Network applet on the Z. No IP address again.

I also tried the aforementioned workaround for the WEP bug in the Network applet, entering

Code: [Select]

iwconfig wlan0 key s:"My 26-character hex WEP key"

It gives me an error message about the \"argument being too long\" (can\'t remember exact wording). I tried the same command without the \"s:\", and it tells me the \"operation is not supported\".

I\'d rather not turn off WEP on my home LAN, just to get WiFi working with my Z. Is there another way I can specify the WEP key (e.g. by editing a config file manually), which will actually work?

I really appreciate all the help here - once I get WiFi working, I think everything else will fall into place... or is that just naive optimism?

Thanks,
Tim

[tawalker]

I just found another possible fix in the OZ 3.3.5 release notes - will try this and report back.

Tim

[tawalker]

The OZ release notes fix seems to have worked  I\'ve got an IP address - now it\'s time to go grab some packages...