New to wifi and it's not working [solved] - Page 2

Silent Observer · posted: 2013-12-06 02:45

Okay, I ordered in another USB wifi (it was $5 less than a 100 foot Cat5e cable, so I figured I'd make this the permanent connection for the laptop); I installed it in a vacant USB port on my Ahtlon XP 2000+, and instantly on starting wicd picked up three networks in the neighborhood. I set up an ad-hoc on the new unit (a Netgear WN111, which appears to have an Atheros chipset -- same maker as my PCMCIA wifi card), and instantly detected it from the laptop -- but I still can't get a connection. I've tried encrypted (WEP passphrase) and unsecured, static IP and DHCP; the best I can get is, if I set up static IP with the laptop and ad-hoc host using 169.254.12.*"autoconfig" addresses, gateway set to my wired router's address, static/global DNS, and no encryption, the laptop will report"done connecting", but the connection scan bar is still going back and forth, the iconbar icon pops up"not connected" when moused over, and the only data I can get through the network seems to be pings both ways (which jump back and forth between below 2 ms and 150-500 ms ping times -- I presume this is shifting data rate due to connection quality). This result is the same, BTW, on the two channels I've tried (3 and 5).

The connection is reporting -50 to -65 dB or so signal strength, which is better than the neighbors' networks (those are down in the -80s), but I can't get to the point of being able to load a web page or download package lists with Synaptic.

Do I need to connect the host to the ad-hoc after creating it? This has never worked for me, so I presume not. I can't connect to the neighbors' network (the one that's unsecured) either, from either machine, so I presume I still have something set wrong.

Silent Observer · posted: 2013-12-07 00:54

Guys, is anyone actually using wifi successfully in antiX 13? I'm getting indications from
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/94439/fatal-module-p80211-not-found-rtl8192cus-wlan-regression-under-antix-13-1-deb"
linktext was:"a discussion I found"
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that some or all wifi hardware drivers fail to compile in (Debian, at least) kernels after 3.4 or so, leading to the"Fatal: Module p80211 not found" I'm seeing when I try to connect via ceni. I see replies that seem to imply people are getting this to work -- are any of those folks using plain stock 13.1 or 13.2 kernels, and if so, how did you get past this problem?

Edit: Okay, that's apparently not what I'm getting; the modules for my hardware (ath and ath9k on the laptop, ath and car9170 on the desktop with the USB wifi) are correctly loaded. I'm back to settings...

BitJam · posted: 2013-12-07 03:10

The information you got re p80211 was somewhat incorrect. According to the
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/PRISM2_USB.html"
linktext was:"Linux Kernel Driver Database"
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that module is enabled with CONFIG_PRISM2_USB. You can check for this on your system with:

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zgrep PRISM2 /proc/config.gz

According to the database page, another module, prism2_usb.ko also gets created. On later kernels, only prism2_usb.ko gets created as is the case with antiX kernels.

So the p80211 module is not missing, it just got renamed to prism2_usb. If you want to use this module and it is not loading automatically, you could try:

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sudo /sbin/modprobe prism2_usb

The module is not missing in antiX kernels, all that happened was the name got changed which makes sense since the p80211 name was confusing. The prism2_usb name is much better.

Silent Observer · posted: 2013-12-07 13:17

Okay, yes, p80211 is a prism related module, and I don't have prism hardware (as noted above the proper modules for my Atheros chipset are loading); so I've removed the prism packages and no longer receive the p80211 failure -- but I still can't get a connection, either via ad hoc or to the neighbor's unsecured network. The latter always fails with"failed to get IP address"; the ad hoc will, with one combination of settings, give"done connecting" in wicd, but then I can only ping back and forth between the peers, can't reach any other machines on my network from the laptop, never mind the internet.

fatmac · posted: 2013-12-09 10:26

See what server your card is seeing

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sudo arp -a

should let you know, so maybe you can go from there.

Failure to get an IP address, suggests that either the server is not serving DHCP or your computer is not set up to receive one, most use WPA encryption

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse#wpa_supplicant"
linktext was:"https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse#wpa_supplicant"
====================================

You will probably also need to set up your machine for 'roaming' wifi; i.e. multiple dhcp server scripts & modes.

Silent Observer · posted: 2013-12-09 12:16

At this point, based on help received on the MEPIS forum, I've learned I don't in fact need an ad hoc network, but rather a virtual access point; I installed hostapd and set it up according to the instructions on the pages I was pointed to. I did get a repeatable connection to the neighbor's unsecured network from my Athlon XP system (which has a USB wifi dongle with a better antenna location/position than that on the laptop's PCMCIA wifi card; the laptop usually can't see the neighbor's AP). I'm using ceni on the laptop, connecting with WPA (host set to accept both WPA and WPA2), have the correct passphrase, etc. I'm getting indication from the log files on both machines that I'm getting authenticated and associated; I just can't get an IP.

I'm using a bridge setup between eth0 and wlan0, which should pass along the DHCP service from my router (which acts as a NAT, putting five or six machines on a single IP address supplied by my ISP), but I suspect I have some setting wrong (I couldn't precisely copy the setup in the web pages I was referred to, because of machine differences and/or because the setup didn't work that way). I'm still getting help on MEPIS forum, now that I've broken through the language barrier (I was speaking English, they were speaking Linux).

Running arp -a on the host shows the router's IP and MAC address found on eth0; running the same command on the laptop after attempting a connection with ceni gives no output, just another prompt.

fatmac · posted: 2013-12-09 18:56

It sounds to me that your problem most likely is with your bridge set up.
Check out
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url was:"http://debian-handbook.info/get/now/"
linktext was:"http://debian-handbook.info/get/now/"
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to see if it helps.
You can read online or download it for free.

Silent Observer · posted: 2013-12-10 00:34

I agree, it's almost certainly a problem with my bridge setup. I'll paste [/]etc/network/interfaces below (since I've gotten no response on the other forums in almost 24 hours).

I'll go ahead and download that Debian manual (though I see it's aimed at Wheezy, and my two primarily antiX systems are on Testing, which as I recall is Sid); I'm not sure what I'll gain from it (I mostly quit reading manuals at that level twenty-plus years ago), but it's only 28 MB and if it's got a good index I might find what I'm looking for without having to read the entire book (though with that file size, it's probably not much bigger than a WinXP user manual).

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# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

# wireless wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual

# set up bridge between eth0 and wlan0
iface br0 inet static
    bridge_ports wlan0 eth0
#    address 192.168.1.100
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 192.168.1.0
    # router at 192.168.1.1 also provides DHCP services #
    gateway 192.168.1.1
    dns-nameservers 216.237.221.42 216.237.219.195

This has my ethernet working, and based on log files I get authenticated and associated from the laptop, but the laptop isn't getting an IP address. I commented the address line in the bridge section because setting eth0 to manual and putting a hard address in the bridge resulted in no wired network connectivity (even though the original I copied from was set up manual and static addressed).

fatmac · posted: 2013-12-10 07:55

I'm no network guru but i'm pretty sure you need those 2 lines you have commented out.
Did you 'bring up' your 'bridge' interface before trying to use it (?).

N.B. The Debian Administrators Handbook was part written by a long time Debian committer.

BitJam · posted: 2013-12-10 10:43

Silent Observer wrote:I'll go ahead and download that Debian manual (though I see it's aimed at Wheezy, and my two primarily antiX systems are on Testing, which as I recall is Sid)

See
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url was:"http://www.debian.org/releases/"
linktext was:"Debian releases"
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Sid is unstable. Jessie is testing.

Silent Observer · posted: 2013-12-10 11:32

fatmac wrote:I'm no network guru but i'm pretty sure you need those 2 lines you have commented out.
Did you 'bring up' your 'bridge' interface before trying to use it (?).

N.B. The Debian Administrators Handbook was part written by a long time Debian committer.

I originally had the address line enabled and etho0 set to manual (instead of dhcp), but then wasn't getting connectivity on eth0; as far as I can tell, I'm not allowed to assign myself an IP address without reserving it on the router. As things stand, with eth0 set to dhcp and the address line commented, I get an address and can connect on eth0, without which the rest of the exercise would be futile.

The other commented line (about the router at 192.168.1.1) is a direct copy of a commented line in the example I cribbed from; it's just documenting the gateway line being a LAN-internal address. As recommended in that resource, I issued

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[/]etc/init.d/networking restart

and

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[/]etc/init.d/hostapd restart

after first creating those and after any changes (not to mention multiple system reboots, just in case; there's a message about restart for networking being deprecated because it doesn't always re-enable all interfaces -- but without a suggestion what to use instead).

fatmac · posted: 2013-12-10 11:40

Only other thing I can think of is

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sudo ifup br0

Silent Observer · posted: 2013-12-11 04:30

That generates a set of error messages (which I don't have available to paste in right now) that, I think boil down to"this isn't a physical interface you can bring up". I did find that wlan0 was failing if I tried to set it to 802.11n; apparently I can only run a hotspot in b/g (honestly, g is plenty fast, it's faster than my internet service and more than half my wire network speed) -- but I still can't get an IP on the laptop.

Silent Observer · posted: 2013-12-11 12:29

Ah, that's the ticket.

I found
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://agentoss.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/creating-a-wireless-access-point-with-debian-linux/"
linktext was:"this page"
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, which says all the others I'd been working from were missing an important bit of information: how to set up the bridge if using DHCP: it's br0 that needs to get the IP address, not eth0 or wlan0. Once I set it up that way, and confirmed that I apparently can't run this wifi dongle in master mode on 802.11n (so dropped back to 802.11g), I was able to connect from the laptop using ceni on the first try -- got IP address, can ping by name as well as by IP, etc. Haven't tried anything like streaming to the laptop yet (audio only, please, on a 300 MHz processor), but I'm confident I'll be able to listen to internet radio on that system.

Pasting in the final [/]etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf and [/]etc/network/interfaces files, for reference...

hostapd.conf:

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# configuration file for wifi virtual access point hosting.
#
# settings to allow ordinary wifi dongle to act as wireless network host.
#
#
### wireless network name ###
interface=wlan0

### bridge name ###
bridge=br0

### driver name ###
driver=nl80211

### country code -- international 2-letter ##
country_code=US

### SSID (= human readable network name) ###
ssid=Luddites

### Operating mode, a=802.11a, b=802.11b, g=802.11g, n=802.11n ###
hw_mode=g

### Channel number ###
channel=3

### WPA Mode ###
wpa=2

### WPA Passphrase ###
wpa_passphrase=<redacted>

## Key Management Algorithm ##
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

## Set Cipher Suites (encryption algorithms) ##
## TKIP = Temporal Key Integrity Protocol
## CCMP = AES in Counter Mode with CBC-MAC
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP

## Shared Key Authentication ##
auth_algs=1

## Accept all MAC addresses ##
macaddr_acl=0

interfaces:

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# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
auto lo br0
iface lo inet loopback

# wired network -> internet
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet manual

# wireless wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual

# set up bridge between eth0 and wlan0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports wlan0 eth0
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
# router at 192.168.1.1 also provides DHCP services #
gateway 192.168.1.1
dns-nameservers 216.237.221.42 216.237.219.195

dolphin_oracle · posted: 2013-12-11 13:01

Good deal, glad you got that working!