Re: [sheflug] Gentoo wireless laptop

["Wonkey Donkey" <wonkey_donkey [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Humphrey" <prh [at] gotadsl.co.uk>
To: "Sheffield Linux Users' Group" <sheflug [at] sheflug.co.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2006 11:30 AM
Subject: [sheflug] Gentoo wireless laptop


>A few days ago I was pestering the list about choice of kernel 
>optimisation,
> and now I'm stuck again after getting that right with the list's help.
>
> This is a Packard-Bell laptop with a 1.5GHz Mobile Celeron; it seems to be
> based on an NEC product. I have a Netgear WG102 access point, which seems
> to work ok, and I'm trying to get a Netgear WG511T card to work in the
> laptop. It did work in a Windows laptop a little while ago in combination
> with the WAP. I'm almost certain that the WAP has a DHCP server for its
> wireless clients.
>
> The WG511T is based on the Atheros chipset (finding that out took several
> days by itself), so I've installed the madwifi drivers and I'm following
> various guides to try to get it to work. I don't know how udev affects
> things, but all my modules get loaded without any action by me (in
> particular, /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 names only one module, 
> which
> is for the wired LAN connector on the motherboard).
>
> I can get as far as marking ath0 up and associating it with the WAP, but I
> can't find a way to discover an IP address. Dhclient cannot get any reply
> to its broadcasts, and every time I run dhclient the machine locks solid
> some time later.
>
> The two main guides I'm using are the Gentoo advanced networking guide and
> the madwifi beginner's how-to.
>
> What am I doing wrong?
>
> -- 
> Rgds
> Peter.
>

Although I don't have the particular wireless equipment you have stated, I 
have tinkered with some wireless stuff.

First things I would look at are:

1.    Do you have any kind of WPA set on the access point, and if so, is the 
same setting specified on the laptop ?
2.    Is there any kind of mac address filtering set at the access point ?
3.    Do you have the latest 'dhcpcd' merged, as well as the wpa-supplicant 
?
4.    Is there any kind of system log you can view in the access point ? 
That should tell you who tried to connect, and whether it was allowed or 
not.

FYI, when I set mine up, I started from the ground up, as in reset the 
access point to its default settings. No security, no mac filtering and gave 
it the Station ID that I wanted.

Once that had connected, using DHCP, I then set the mac address filtering, 
then set the security using WPA2 and added the shared key to the network 
config file.

After all that was set, I then made the Station ID invisible.

The guide I followed for the client config is here:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=4&chap=4

Steve.




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