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piel

Member

Registered: 2012-01-20

Posts: 6

Netgear WNA3100 USB wireless unable to connect to router

I have a Netgear WNA3100 USB WiFi, but can't make it to work.
I have managed to install ndiswrapper from the sources, the driver seems to load nicely:

ndiswrapper -l

bcmwlhigh5 : driver installed
    device (0846:9020) present

dmesg|grep -e ndiswrapper -e wlan0

[   62.482141] ndiswrapper version 1.57 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=yes)
[   62.775833] ndiswrapper: driver bcmwlhigh5 (Netgear,11/05/2009, 5.60.180.11) loaded
[   63.362495] wlan0: ethernet device e0:46:9a:1b:6b:2e using NDIS driver: bcmwlhigh5, version: 0x53cb40b, NDIS version: 0x501, vendor: 'NDIS Network Adapter', 0846:9020.F.conf
[   63.366332] wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2-PSK; AES/CCMP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2-PSK
[   63.367595] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

iwconfig wlan0

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:300 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B   
          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

The only possible error I can get is after starting wpa_supplicant:

Failed to read or parse configuration '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf'.
Failed to add interface wlan0
Cancelling scan request
Cancelling authentication timeout

I am totally lost, wireless is the only connection possibilty right now, and I am out of ideas.
Oh, and scanning works, the router comes up. I have to connect WPA or WPA2.

Please help me if you can!

Last edited by piel (2012-01-20 16:26:14)

pyronide

Member

Registered: 2011-11-18

Posts: 4

Re: Netgear WNA3100 USB wireless unable to connect to router

what chipset does your adapter use?  chances are there is native support for your adapter - and perhaps no need to use ndiswrapper for your wireless adapter.

Last edited by pyronide (2012-01-20 17:13:33)

piel

Member

Registered: 2012-01-20

Posts: 6

Re: Netgear WNA3100 USB wireless unable to connect to router

According to wikidevices and lsusb

Chip 1: Broadcom BCM43231

All others, who reported success with this USB stick used ndiswrapper AFAIK.
I have a different problem than others reported, no error seems to be with the driver, rather than network setup, but I don't know what...

Failed to read or parse configuration '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf'.
Failed to add interface wlan0
Cancelling scan request
Cancelling authentication timeout

I think here lies the problem but I have no idea what to do.

Strike0

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 1,429

Re: Netgear WNA3100 USB wireless unable to connect to router

Your driver output looks good really, but yeah you need to setup your connection key of course.
Either do that manually or maybe you want to try wifi-select that will do it for you most probably.
I read somewhere b43 supports that chip, if you dont need wifi-N. But I would not fiddle with that for now until you get it working the way you started.

piel

Member

Registered: 2012-01-20

Posts: 6

Re: Netgear WNA3100 USB wireless unable to connect to router

I did try to connect manually, since with netcfg I only saw that it failed.

Update: I get the same parsing error message if I delete my entries in wpa_supplicant.conf !!!!!
Is there something wrong with the original .conf file?

Strike0

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 1,429

Re: Netgear WNA3100 USB wireless unable to connect to router

I did try to connect manually, since with netcfg I only saw that it failed.

Update: I get the same parsing error message if I delete my entries in wpa_supplicant.conf !!!!!
Is there something wrong with the original .conf file?

Perhaps its faster, if you delete that .conf copy and just re-install wpa-supplicant. Report again please, if you still get the error then.

Make a backup copy first if you need, then you can diff it with the fresh install as well.