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Re: wireless network problems



Hey Andy,

Thanks again for all the pointers. I'll definitely study that newbie page at sourceforge. I did notice the information in wireless.opts about the RG-1000, and entered the correct essid. Maybe I'll try turning encryption off and see if that helps. Just before KDE failed I had also edited /etc/pcmcia/network.opts, entering "y" for dhcp. I wonder if that could have caused some kind of conflict? Maybe I should just stick with entering my network information in wireless.opts?

I guess I should probably stick with stable until I know what I'm doing.

Happy holidays,

Tim

Andy Firman wrote:

On Tue, Dec 23, 2003 at 11:54:31AM -0700, Tim Folger wrote:
Hi Andy,

Thanks for your advice. My Orinoco gold card uses128-bit encryption, but a wireless gateway I use (called the RG-1000, manufactured by Lucent) specifies a five-character-long alphanumeric key for both computers on my home network. So I'm not sure how I would go about converting that to a 26-character key. If you have any advice I'd appreciate it.

No advice on that issue.  Read the RG-1000 manual carefully.
There are two ways to do the keys...alphanumeric and hex.

I have always used the silver card.  Not sure if that is an issue.
And I am running Debian unstable just so you know...

If it is brand new, it might be a newer chipset like Nate mentioned
in another post.  Try doing this command:  "cardctl ident"

This is what I get:

andy@trout:~$ sudo cardctl ident
Socket 0:
 no product info available
Socket 1:
 product info: "Lucent Technologies", "WaveLAN/IEEE", "Version 01.01", ""
 manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
 function: 6 (network)

I also tried entering my wireless settings in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts, but I must have messed something up: my card seemed to work--it lit up--but KDE refused to load.

Bummer.  It should not have an effect on your desktop environment.
I wonder what you did?

The only section in wireless.opts that you need to mess with is this:
(and by the way...do you see this in your wireless.opts???)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
# Here are a few examples with a few Wireless LANs supported...
# The matching is done on the first 3 bytes of the MAC address

# Lucent Wavelan IEEE (+ Orinoco, RoamAbout and ELSA)
# Note : wvlan_cs driver only, and version 1.0.4+ for encryption support
*,*,*,00:60:1D:*|*,*,*,00:02:2D:*)
   INFO="Wavelan IEEE example (Lucent default settings)"
   ESSID="Wavelan Network"
   MODE="Managed"
#    RATE="auto"
   KEY="s:secu1"
# To set all four keys, use :
#   KEY="s:secu1 [1] key s:secu2 [2] key s:secu3 [3] key s:secu4 [4] key [1]"
# For the RG 1000 Residential Gateway: The ESSID is the identifier on
# the unit, and the default key is the last 5 digits of the same.
#   ESSID="084d70"
#   KEY="s:84d70"
   ;;
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now the only thing I need to do is change the ESSID="mycurrentssid"
I don't run encryption at home...but when onsite with a client, I use
the iwconfig command.

But you see there is some comments on the RG 1000.
Maybe you don't see that because you are using an older version???

So now I'm about to reinstall woody. I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to do a very minimal installation, and then upgrade to sarge or sid (using my painfully slow dial-up connection)? Would a dist-upgrade also upgrade the kernel?

That is way overkill.  But if you are a newbie...then go for it.
It is good practice learning the installer.
I did it many, many times learning Debian.  Now I can fix just
about anything that breaks. (knock on wood)

The kernel is another can of worms.  If you study this page hard,
and keep learning how to do the kernel, it becomes very easy using
the kernel-package system.  Very easy.

http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html

I can't do lsmod right now because I'm (arrgh) using Windows, but I think during installation I installed the hermes and orinoco modules.

I notice that in your /etc/network/interfaces file you have "auto eth1." I thought I had read somewhere that including that line would interfere with the pcmcia module, so I didn't' include it in my file.
Tim

If you are brave, and this is just a practice machine,
maybe you can try jumping right up to unstable.

Good luck.

Andy





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