Re: Thinkpad T20 wireless troubles

[Chris Brotherton <chris@protonlab.net>]

On Wed, Sep 12, 2007 at 10:35:51AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
[snip]
> 
> Try the following:
> 
> 1) unload and reload the driver module
> 2) check (and post) the iwconfig output
After unloading, reloading and plugging in the network card, my iwconfig
output is:

eth0      IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"" Nickname:"HERMES I" 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:11 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3  
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/92  Signal level=134/153  Noise level=134/153
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

> 3) do ifconfig xxxx up; iwconfig xxxx essid nnnnnnnn
After these commands, the iwconfig output is:

eth0      IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"melange" Nickname:"HERMES I" 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457 GHz  Access Point: None   
          Bit Rate:2 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3  
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/92  Signal level=134/153  Noise level=134/153
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Notice that the Bit Rate dropped to 2 Mb/s.

My access point uses wep.  So I ran "iwconfig eth0 key s:XXXXXXXX".  The
iwconfig output is:


eth0      IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"melange" Nickname:"HERMES I" 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point:  00:00:00:00:00:00 
          Bit Rate:2 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3  
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=40/92  Signal level=-54 dBm  Noise level=-94 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

I sanitised the output with 0s and Xs.

> 4) repeat step 2 - if the card is associated, you should see "Access Point: nn:nn:nn:nn:nn:nn"

At this point, everything seems normal.  Now I try "dhclient eth0" and it times
out without getting an ip address.  I don't think this is a hardware problem
since everything works during the debian installer and when I had freebsd
installed. 

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris.