Re: Wired and wireless PCMCIA LAN cards: configuration problems
On Mon, 05 Mar 2007 20:17:12 +0700
Ken Heard <ken@heard.name> wrote:
[snip]
> 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.
This is a notorious problem; hardware manufacturers change the chipsets
and leave the model number the same. Sometimes they use a different
revision number after the model number, but product adverts often don't
include it, and almost never prominently. Sell it on ebay?
> 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.
>
[snipped some config stuff]
> 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.
iwconfig only sets up the wireless aspect of the card; you still need
'ifconfig' / 'ifup' / 'dhclient' or whatever to configure IP
networking.
> 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?
kismet will sniff and list APs for you. It won't automatically help you
enter keys and associate with them, though.
Celejar
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