[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Thinkpad T20 wireless troubles



Chris Brotherton wrote:
[...]
> 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. 

I wonder why your wireless card shows up as eth0 (mine is wlan0)? Presumably its
because you used the wireless card to install Debian and the installer gave it
eth0 as default. But the T20 has a built-in ethernet interface. I wonder if
there is some clash here (that occurs when you boot the system) between the two
interfaces. Try running "ifconfig" as root and inspect the output.

In an earlier post you said that you could not ping the AP. You could
double-check that theT20 and the AP are on the same network. I presume that your
AP also provides the DHCP server. You would have to be on the same network to
access it.

To check whether WEP is the problem you could try turning WEP off at the AP
while you conduct tests.

If you are desperate, you could configure the built-in ethernet interface, set
is as the only interface in /etc/network/interfaces and check that everything
works by ethernet cable connection (including WEP). Then you could install the
wireless card again. (This should then appear as wlan0 rather that eth0.)

-- 
Chris.



Reply to: