Re: Wired and wireless PCMCIA LAN cards: configuration problems
After taking to heart the two messages received in response to my plea
for help (thanks pinniped and Kevin Mark) I spent several hours on the
net and found some useful information. Nevertheless, I still do not
have a wireless connection.
First, I agree with both pinniped and Kevin Mark that gui configurators
for wireless cards are not helpful. After some experimentation I found
that something in either KWiFiManager or the wireless network utility in
the KDE Control Centre added the two lines in the
/etc/network/interfaces file "address 127.0.0.1" and "netmask 255.0.0.0"
were preventing me from booting with the wired card already installed,
because doing so would hang the computer when I tried to log on to my
user. Once I commented out those two lines I had no trouble.
Second, of the two wireless cards I tried, I found that one, the
SMC2835W, comes in three versions. Version 1 works if the prism54
module is installed. However, versions 2 and 3 do not. The only way to
determine the version of such cards is to run "cardctl ident".
There is absolutely nothing in the packaging or the manual on the
accompanying CDROM to identify the version. It so happens that I have
version 3; so I am out of luck as far as that card is concerned. Anyone
want to buy it? It would be nice if manufacturers came clean about
their products.
Third, I still had the second card I tried, a surecom EP-9428-g\3A. I
discovered that the driver for this card is the rt2500. (Is that also
the chipset name?) As pinniped said, the rt2500 driver became open
source about a year ago.
I consequently downloaded packages rt2500, rt2500-source,
rt2500-modules-2.6.18-4-686 and other packages that they depend upon. I
then in succession ran "module-assistant prepare", "module-assistant
get rt2500", "module-assistant build rt2500" and finally "dpkg -i
rt2500-modules-2.6.18-4-686_1.1.0+cvs20060620-3+2.6.18.dfsg.1-11_i386.deb".
(I later discovered that a simpler way to compile this driver was to run
"module-assistant auto-install rt2500-source".) Lsmod showed that
rt2500 had indeed been installed.
Ifconfig returned the following:
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:02:44:93:40:9C
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:10284 errors:18 dropped:18 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:22 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:512052 (500.0 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xc000
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1944 (1.8 KiB) TX bytes:1944 (1.8 KiB)
"Iwconfig eth1" initially returned the following:
eth1 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:"floor4_2"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power=-1
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=-86 dBm Noise level:-206 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
I obviously needed an encryption key; so I tried to provide one by
amending the /etc/network/interfaces file:
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# The wired network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
#address 127.0.0.1
#netmask 255.0.0.0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth0
# The wireless network interface
allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
wireless-essid floor4
wireless-mode managed
wireless-key s:abcde12344
wireless-security-mode open
auto eth1
I then for good measure rebooted with the wireless card installed.
Those additions made no difference; I could not ping the server. "Ping
192.168.0.2" returned "connect: Network is unreachable".
Next I commented out the four lines beginning with "wireless" and
rebooted once more. Next I ran "iwconfig eth1 key s:abcde12344" and ran
again "iwconfig eth1":
eth1 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:"floor4"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.462 GHz Access Point:
00:0F:66:EA:2E:1A
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power=-1
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:6162-6364-6531-3233-3434-0000-00 Security
mode:open
Link Quality=57/100 Signal level=-76 dBm Noise level:-206 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
This time the power and link/act LEDs on the card lit up for the first
time, but I still got the "network unreachable" message after pinging
the server.
Finally, I ran "RaConfig2500" which returned "RaConfig2500: cannot
connect to X server".
Anybody have any idea what the problem or problems may be? Another
question: is there a Debian package which sniffs for 802.11g wireless
access points and permits entry of encryption keys for those points,
thereby permitting access?
Regards,
Ken Heard
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