Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

Hiram · 2012-01-10 13:04:48

Alright so I installed Arch on an ION330HT, to find the wireless won't connect. I've run Arch on it before and it worked perfectly so I'm unsure what's going wrong. I have the exact same net-auto-wireless config file that I have on my other machines, so I'm sure it's not a problem with the configuration. I've tried doing it manually as per the instructions on the wiki, to no avail. I've checked the logs, and the machine receives an IP address, so I know it sees the network in some way.

The only thing I've noticed, is that the output of iwconfig has the line "Encryption key:off" in it, where as other machines don't - I'm thinking this is the issue, but I can't imagine what could cause this.

Any help would be great.

olive · 2012-01-10 13:36:19

This is a little too vague to answer. Usually when auto-foo do not work, the best is to try it by hand. Could you post the output of iwconfig? of ifconfig -a ? Is your dns correctly set (try to ping an IP for example ping 8.8.8.8 to see if it works).

Hiram · 2012-01-10 22:08:33

As I said in the original post, I did try manually, as per the instructions on the wiki. i.e. created a wpa_supplicant.conf with wpa_passphrase, started wpa_supplicant, checked output with iwconfig, started dhcpcd. I checked the output of /var/log/everything.log, which told me that a broadcast for a lease occurred, and the IP address was granted from 192.168.1.254 - the routers address. If I then try to ping the router (192.168.1.254), I get 100% packet loss. Pinging any other address does the same thing.

iwconfig output:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"getoffmalawn"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:04:ED:00:B6:8E   
          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s   Tx-Power=14 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=69/70  Signal level=-41 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:11   Missed beacon:0

ifconfig -a output:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 70:71:BC:5F:50:B4  
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:21 

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:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:25:D3:89:5D:81  
          inet addr:192.168.1.4  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::225:d3ff:fe89:5d81/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:13 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:3016 (2.9 Kb)  TX bytes:1486 (1.4 Kb)

dhcpcd output:

Jan 11 18:02:51 localhost dhcpcd[859]: version 5.2.12 starting
Jan 11 18:02:51 localhost dhcpcd[859]: wlan0: rebinding lease of 192.168.1.4
Jan 11 18:02:51 localhost dhcpcd[859]: wlan0: acknowledged 192.168.1.4 from 192.168.1.254
Jan 11 18:02:51 localhost dhcpcd[859]: wlan0: checking for 192.168.1.4
Jan 11 18:02:56 localhost dhcpcd[859]: wlan0: leased 192.168.1.4 for 86400 seconds
Jan 11 18:02:56 localhost dhcpcd[859]: forked to background, child pid 882
Jan 11 18:03:23 localhost kernel: [   51.096556] NET: Registered protocol family 10
Jan 11 18:03:23 localhost kernel: [   51.125001] NET: Registered protocol family 4
Jan 11 18:03:23 localhost kernel: [   51.131730] NET: Registered protocol family 5
Jan 11 18:03:34 localhost kernel: [   61.803358] wlan0: no IPv6 routers present

/dev/zero · 2012-01-10 22:22:29

What are you trying to ping? Have you tested whether you can ping on the local network, even if you can't ping to anything on the internet? Can you ping the router? Can you ping by IP even if you can't ping by domain name? What's in your "/etc/resolve.conf"? What kind of wifi card is it and have you stfwed for whether that card requires any non-standard setup?

Hiram · 2012-01-10 22:47:20

/dev/zero wrote:

What are you trying to ping? Have you tested whether you can ping on the local network, even if you can't ping to anything on the internet? Can you ping the router? Can you ping by IP even if you can't ping by domain name?

Hiram wrote:

If I then try to ping the router (192.168.1.254), I get 100% packet loss.

The same goes for any address on the local network.

/dev/zero wrote:

What's in your "/etc/resolve.conf"? What kind of wifi card is it and have you stfwed for whether that card requires any non-standard setup?

I'm at work at the moment, so I'll get back to you with the answers to these questions. Also, what is stfwed? When I had Arch setup on the machine before, I do not remember doing any non-standard setup.

/dev/zero · 2012-01-10 22:59:57

Hiram wrote:

/dev/zero wrote:
What are you trying to ping? Have you tested whether you can ping on the local network, even if you can't ping to anything on the internet? Can you ping the router? Can you ping by IP even if you can't ping by domain name?
Hiram wrote:
If I then try to ping the router (192.168.1.254), I get 100% packet loss.
The same goes for any address on the local network.

Ah, missed that, I focus on what's in the code blocks rather than buried mid-paragraph ;-)

So, it's strange that you can't even ping the router by IP address.

In addition to your /etc/resolve.conf when you get a chance, please also show the output of:

ip route

Hiram wrote:

/dev/zero wrote:
What's in your "/etc/resolve.conf"? What kind of wifi card is it and have you stfwed for whether that card requires any non-standard setup?
I'm at work at the moment, so I'll get back to you with the answers to these questions. Also, what is stfwed? When I had Arch setup on the machine before, I do not remember doing any non-standard setup.

sftw = "Search the frickin web"
So if I ask whether you sftwed something, that means: did you do some independent research first?

So, the card worked in the past, but maybe this time you've forgotten to load or configure a module that you previously used. Or maybe a kernel update introduced a new bug? I would at least search the web to see whether things have changed in the Linux world, and maybe jog my memory in case I forgot something. There's no excuse for not stfwing before starting a new thread.

ewaller · 2012-01-11 02:15:47

In addition to /dev/zero's request for the output of ip route, can you ping 192.168.1.4? If not, can you ping localhost? As a sanity check, are you sure your router is not at 192.168.1.1 ?

Hiram · 2012-01-11 11:30:51

Alright, update. I left it pinging the router before I left home this morning, and I've just checked - out of 40,000 packets sent, 75% were lost. So traffic WAS getting through - so much so that doing pacman -Sy actually worked, although it was very slow. I recently bought a new router, that was much better than my old router, the key difference between the two being that the new one has wireless n support, where as the old one was b/g only. It was set to g/n only, so I switched it over to b/g only - it's connecting to the stage that I can ping outside addresses immediately now, however it's very slow - I get about 25 KB/s. I'm letting it crawl along at the moment, downloading 62mb of updates - maybe an update will solve this issue.

/dev/zero wrote:
What's in your "/etc/resolve.conf"? What kind of wifi card is it and have you stfwed for whether that card requires any non-standard setup?

/etc/resolv.conf (strangely, I don't have /etc/resolve.conf, but /etc/resolv.conf. My other machines are like this also):

$ cat resolv.conf 
# Generated by dhcpcd from wlan0
# /etc/resolv.conf.head can replace this line
domain home.gateway
nameserver 192.168.1.254
# /etc/resolv.conf.tail can replace this line

The wifi card is an AR9285 (Atheros), no mention of any non-standard setup that I could find. There was some talk about wifi being slow for one user on the Ubuntu forums - they were advised to ditch wifi and use ethernet instead.

sftw = "Search the frickin web"
So if I ask whether you sftwed something, that means: did you do some independent research first?
So, the card worked in the past, but maybe this time you've forgotten to load or configure a module that you previously used. Or maybe a kernel update introduced a new bug? I would at least search the web to see whether things have changed in the Linux world, and maybe jog my memory in case I forgot something. There's no excuse for not stfwing before starting a new thread.

Yeah I did, I've found talk about an issue that seems very close to mine - http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=63642 however no solution was ever reached. They came to the same conclusions that I mentioned earlier - connecting in b/g mode instead of n mode works, but is still very slow.

ip route output:

 $ cat iproute.txt 
default via 192.168.1.254 dev wlan0  metric 303 
192.168.1.0/24 dev wlan0  proto kernel  scope link  src 192.168.1.4  metric 303

In addition to /dev/zero's request for the output of ip route, can you ping 192.168.1.4? If not, can you ping localhost? As a sanity check, are you sure your router is not at 192.168.1.1 ?

I can ping both 192.168.1.4 and localhost just fine. The router is definitely not 192.168.1.1, I've connected to it at 192.168.1.254 to change wireless settings today. Not going crazy yet

olive · 2012-01-11 15:36:41

What's the output of iwlist scan? Maybe there are too much people using wireless in your building. Try to use a channel not used by anybody else to avoid interference.

Last edited by olive (2012-01-11 15:56:56)

Hiram · 2012-01-12 08:10:02

Alright, solved. Olive mentioning the channel was a good idea - I've changed it from 1 to 6, and traffic speed for that machine has increased 30 fold. It's strange that none of the other machines on the network were effected though.

Strike0 · 2012-01-14 00:50:56

Hiram wrote:

It's strange that none of the other machines on the network were effected though.

Since your wifi is on 2.4Ghz, there are a number of reasons to explain that though, depending on the number of devices wifi-ing around. I found this a good read for that.

Hiram · 2012-01-14 03:09:31

That's a great resource! Thanks heaps.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-01-10 13:04:48

Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#2 2012-01-10 13:36:19

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#3 2012-01-10 22:08:33

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#4 2012-01-10 22:22:29

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#5 2012-01-10 22:47:20

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#6 2012-01-10 22:59:57

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#7 2012-01-11 02:15:47

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#8 2012-01-11 11:30:51

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#9 2012-01-11 15:36:41

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#10 2012-01-12 08:10:02

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#11 2012-01-14 00:50:56

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

#12 2012-01-14 03:09:31

Re: Wireless connects and I get an IP, but I can't ping anything

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