Wireless problems since switching to udev

arooaroo · 2005-08-22 01:29:22

Hi,

Once upon a time, maybe twice, there lived a happy Archer called Rocky Racoon. Rocky liked his familiar devfs with a stock kernel. Wireless life was simple thanks to his Intel Centrino and a few commands: pacman -S ipw2200; module was loaded by hotplug and /etc/rc.d/network ifup eth1 guaranteed connection to Rocky's wireless router.

Oh, how times have changed! A gang leader by the name of Judd declared a devfs apocolypse. Rocky ran in circles in sheer panic - what to do?! Rocky switched to Dibble's gloriously speedy cko kernel and used udev - all in one jump. Everything ran ok, except poor little Rocky Raccon could no longer get his wireless connection

Rocky first realised that the ipw2200 module was not being loaded, so he recompiled against Dibble's kernel, and all was well - the module jumped back to life! Yet, could Rocky get his eth1 interface up? No, was the sad answer. Life is happy via wires and eth0, but nothing else.

So Rocky began to wonder, what has changed to make these more difficult times? Wireless used to be simple - but now it just won't work. Poor Rocky Racoon. He's looked at the wiki and searched the forums but didn't find anything obviously relevant.

What can be done to help poor Rocky?

jackmetal · 2005-08-22 08:41:43

Howdy arooaroo

I forced a re-compile/install of ieee80211 and then of ipw2200 and mine is back working.

Do you get any error when you try to bring the interface up?

arooaroo · 2005-08-22 08:47:20

jackmetal wrote:

I forced a re-compile/install of ieee80211 and then of ipw2200 and mine is back working.
Do you get any error when you try to bring the interface up?

As I said, Rocky did recompile and the both ieee80211 and ipw2200 are loading without fail. Bring the interface up is a different matter.

No error as such, if /etc/rc.d/network ifup eth1 is executed, you get a long pause, and then back to the prompt without anything, positive or negative.

Now, since posting, Rocky Racoon spotted that /etc/conf.d/wireless was totally commented out. In the past, this file had not been touched and yet Rocky had his wireless connection fine. We will have to wait until Rocky gets home from work to see if the updated /etc/conf.d/wireless will work.

tomk · 2005-08-22 11:22:57

What (if anything) shows up in your logs when the modules are loaded, and also when ifup is run?

arooaroo wrote:

A gang leader by the name of Judd declared a devfs apocolypse.

I think you're looking in the wrong place if you want to blame someone for this. You should probably take it up with one Mr Torvalds.

arooaroo · 2005-08-22 11:45:48

tomk wrote:

arooaroo wrote:
A gang leader by the name of Judd declared a devfs apocolypse.

Ah, yes, wasn't my intention to say that it was Judd's decision - I merely meant was Judd passed on, announced, relayed, declared by proxy, etc. I was referring to his little announcement on Arch news. But, didn't do a good job. It was late, for me, when I wrote it.

I'm sure the tale of Rocky Raccoon will continue tonight...

arooaroo · 2005-08-22 18:16:36

Ok, here's the current news about Rocky's plight...

Nothing still seems to be working.

Iwconfig:

lo        no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      unassociated  ESSID:"3com"
          Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
          Bit Rate=0 kb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm
          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

eth2      no wireless extensions.

ifconfig:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0F:1F:XX:XX:XX
          inet addr:192.168.1.2  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::20f:1fff:fe25:86ab/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1714 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1984 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:1135800 (1.0 Mb)  TX bytes:188413 (183.9 Kb)
          Interrupt:11

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:600 (600.0 b)  TX bytes:600 (600.0 b)

/etc/conf.d/wireless:

wlan_eth1="eth1 mode managed essid 3com"
WLAN_INTERFACES=(eth1)

rc.conf:

lo="lo 127.0.0.1"
#eth0="eth0 192.168.1.3 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255"
eth0="dhcp"
eth1="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(lo eth0)

Clearly, Rocky isn't initialising wireless at bootup, but he prefers to run it himself via /etc/rc.d/network ifup eth1 (or at least that used to work before all the changes).

The only relevant error I can find is from /var/log/errors.log:

Aug 22 19:06:00 roo dhcpcd[5772]: timed out waiting for a valid DHCP server response

Is Rocky Raccoon missing something obvious. It used to be so simple to get his wireless connection up and running.

tomk · 2005-08-22 19:15:07

I'd still like to know what's in your logs in response to the modules loading. I'm not talking about errors - just the messages indicating that the driver has been registered and activated correctly.

arooaroo · 2005-08-22 19:48:37

tomk wrote:

I'd still like to know what's in your logs in response to the modules loading. I'm not talking about errors - just the messages indicating that the driver has been registered and activated correctly.

I can't see anything that's relevant. Here's what I see from kernel.log

Aug 22 20:44:08 roo ieee80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
Aug 22 20:44:08 roo ieee80211: 802.11 data/management/control stack, 1.0.3
Aug 22 20:44:08 roo ieee80211: Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Intel Corporation <jketreno@linux.in
tel.com>
Aug 22 20:44:08 roo ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.0.6
Aug 22 20:44:08 roo ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2004 Intel Corporation
Aug 22 20:44:08 roo ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:03.0[A] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 7 (level, low
) -> IRQ 7
Aug 22 20:44:08 roo ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection

Is that what you meant?

phrakture · 2005-08-22 20:14:36

arooaroo wrote:

eth1      unassociated  ESSID:"3com"
          Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
          Bit Rate=0 kb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm
          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Ummm you have no MAC address at all - that usually implies a problem between the hardware and module...

Can you try rebuilding the ipw module?

arooaroo · 2005-08-22 20:17:58

phrakture wrote:

Ummm you have no MAC address at all - that usually implies a problem between the hardware and module...
Can you try rebuilding the ipw module?

I had rebuilt for a second time. Dang. I wonder if it's a problem with Dibble's archck kernel. No disrespect!! I think I may revert to the stock kernel to try and eliminate this potential factor. Or is this a silly idea based on ignorance?

agilyben · 2005-08-22 20:23:59

eth1 unassociated ESSID:"3com"

It appears that the modules are loading fine. I've had mine show as unassociated before and I 'piddled' with iwconfig and finally got it. ;-)

Are you using security? I have that problem (off and on) when I set my key to restricted sometimes.

I doubt it'll help, you probably already know this; but here's how I set mine up:

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid blahblah
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 key open xxxxxxxxxx
dhcpcd wlan0

Then, when it's associated I can set the key to restricted.

iwconfig wlan0 key restricted xxxxxxxxx

tomk · 2005-08-23 09:29:52

arooaroo wrote:

Is that what you meant?

Yeah, that's what I meant, and you're right - there's no clues there. Just wanted to be thorough.

The fact that eth1 shows up in iwconfig suggests to me that the driver is built correctly. If it is, you should be able to do

ifconfig eth1 up

to activate the interface at the ethernet layer, and then

ifconfig eth1

to see its MAC address. It that much is OK, try

iwlist eth1 scan

and see if your AP is detected. If there are any other APs listed, you might have some interference going on - try changing your AP's channel if so. You could also try specifying your AP's MAC address in /etc/conf.d/wireless like this:

wlan_eth1="eth1 mode managed essid 3com ap 1A:2B:3C:4D:5E:6F"

lanrat · 2005-08-23 10:38:09

I'm not an expert but isn't no MAC address suggesting that there is no firmware loaded?
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/
(BTW on this webpage there are also requirements for the kernel so you might want to check them too)

There is also a forum thread about firmware, udev and persistent naming:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … v+firmware
(hey, look who's there :-))

dtw · 2005-08-23 10:46:25

i reckon firmware too aroo - always sounded like firmware to me.

You can always try

sh -x /etc/rc.d/network ifup eth1

to see what that is actually doing

arooaroo · 2005-08-23 11:16:38

@phrak, Dibble and Ianrat - I've just realised, iwconfig eth1 doesn't show the MAC address, it shows the Access point. Because my wireless card was not connecting with the router, the access point address was empty.

I'm at uni at the moment, if I do as tomk says, and ifconfig eth1 up, eth1 is shown, and it has detected the wireless network here. (Admittedly, I can't use it until I install a whole load of MS VPN crap mind - but it's detecting none-the-less.) So, I'm happy it's not a firmware issue now.

It may be an issue with my router. I don't know why. It hasn't changed since I last had it working under Arch. But I can't experiment further until I get home tonight.

Cheers all.

dtw · 2005-08-23 11:29:29

You don't use mac address security on your router do you? My card MAC address changes after I load the firmware - there is a chance maybe you MAC address has changed...

arooaroo · 2005-08-23 11:48:42

dibblethewrecker wrote:

You don't use mac address security on your router do you? My card MAC address changes after I load the firmware - there is a chance maybe you MAC address has changed...

Not that I'm aware of. I remember that I was going to, but I'm sure I didn't do it in the end... I'll have to check later.

arooaroo · 2005-08-24 00:24:29

Ok, so I'm at home, wirelessly connected to my router and the world is my oyster yay - so it's working at last.

The thing is, I'm not quite sure what I did differently than other times! Here's the beef so far...

I pulled up the interface via ifconfig for eth1. I did a iwlist scan and it didn't pick anything up. So, I loaded up KWifiManager and it automatically detected the presence of my router, access point address and everything.

So, I closed it and re-ran iwlist scan and sure enough, the info appeared now! So, I grabbed the access point as tomk suggested, added it to my /etc/conf.d/wireless file and then did my usual /etc/rc.d/network ifup eth1 and it worked.

Now, until I try it all again, I'm not sure how critical the kwifi app was to doing something under the hood. We'll see. For now it's working, and I'm glad I know firmware is fine. Any issues now are just config files.

Thanks for all your help. Rocky is a very happy raccoon. (you all know who Rocky Raccoon is, right?)

Arch Linux

#1 2005-08-22 01:29:22

Wireless problems since switching to udev

#2 2005-08-22 08:41:43

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#3 2005-08-22 08:47:20

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#4 2005-08-22 11:22:57

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#5 2005-08-22 11:45:48

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#6 2005-08-22 18:16:36

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#7 2005-08-22 19:15:07

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#8 2005-08-22 19:48:37

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#9 2005-08-22 20:14:36

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#10 2005-08-22 20:17:58

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#11 2005-08-22 20:23:59

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#12 2005-08-23 09:29:52

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#13 2005-08-23 10:38:09

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#14 2005-08-23 10:46:25

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#15 2005-08-23 11:16:38

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#16 2005-08-23 11:29:29

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#17 2005-08-23 11:48:42

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

#18 2005-08-24 00:24:29

Re: Wireless problems since switching to udev

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