Re: dhcp client wifi setup
Richard Lyons wrote:
[...]
Nearly! You were right that the modules were not loaded. I tried
'modprobe ieee80211' and 'ifup eth0' and also rebooting after editing
/etc/modules. It now loads two modules ieee80211 and ieee80211_crypt.
I assume that is the expected outcome.
It still does not associate automatically, but if I
manually 'ifconfig eth0 essid...' and 'ifconfig eth0 key...' and then
'ifup eth0', then ifconfig eth0 shows the 'Frequency:' and 'Access Point:'
for the router correctly. But still ifup eth0 fails to get an offer.
I think it is normal that the wireless interface only associates with
the AP after the key and the essid have been set (if WEP is used and the
router does not broadcast the essid). The ipw2100 driver on my laptop
automatically loads the modules you mention above and additionally the
module ieee80211_crypt_wep. Therefore I hope that "modprobe
ieee80211_crypt_wep" is the missing piece of the puzzle.
(BTW, I tried several iterations, and on one occasion, iwconfig failed 'No
such device' and I then found it had allocated wlan0 instead. That did
connect either. I think this is a red herring [=irrelevant and
confusing].)
Oh yes, bootup-device-roulette: nice game, especially since the rules
can change whenever the kernel is upgraded. The best way to get rid of
this is to use udev to assign well-defined aliases based on vendor-IDs
or serial numbers, but the quick-and-dirty trick of explicitly including
the orinoco driver at the top of /etc/modules could already be
sufficient for a deterministic assignment of its interface name.
I must be getting close. iwconfig now shows, for example:
...Link Quality=18/92 Signal level=-79 dBm Noise level=-97 dBm
Are those reasonable figures?
That looks good to me, you are almost 20 dBm above noise. My own ipw2100
functions reliably down to a signal level of about -86 dBm, so you
should be fine. However, if your problem persists it might be worthwhile
to try to explicitly set the sensitivity threshold very low, e.g.
"iwconfig eth0 sens -85". (I have to mention that I have no practical
experience with this feature as it is not implemented in the ipw2100
driver, and anyway I think that the association with an AP means that
the wireless driver is satisfied with the signal level.)
Thanks for the help so far -- and on xmas day!
You are welcome. I was messing around with my own wireless configuration
anyway, as a "Christmass project" to migrate to the modules which were
recently included in the kernel sources, so your question came at the
right moment.
Regards,
Florian
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