Arch Linux

arthro

Member

Registered: 2013-03-25

Posts: 9

[SOLVED] iw and iwconfig

Hi!

I'm using an old i686 with archlinux installed (and up-to-date) as a router, and am following https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/So … cess_point

However, the "iw" is not working as expected. "iw list" gives me "list: no such device". In fact, it behaves almost exactly like "iwconfig", as if it were a symlink to it ... except that it isn't, I checked.

I decide to get rid of "iwconfig" by removing the "wireless_tools" package, and "iw" stopped working. It seems to need "iwconfig" to work. And yet, when I remove "iw" and re-install it, "wireless_tools" is not a dependency.

Does anybody have any possible explanations?

Much obliged.

Last edited by arthro (2015-04-23 08:27:54)

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Mr.Elendig

#archlinux@freenode channel op

From: The intertubes

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,092

Re: [SOLVED] iw and iwconfig

`type iw`

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ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,804

Re: [SOLVED] iw and iwconfig

Believe it or not, the wiki does actually make a comment about this.  It is not easy to find unless you know where to look

iwconfig has been deprecated in favor of iw, but... iw does not support the legacy wext api
I am guessing your old hardware does not support the newer nl80211 standard.

Edit:  Perhaps iw fails over to iwconfig.

Last edited by ewaller (2015-04-22 14:56:29)

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arthro

Member

Registered: 2013-03-25

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] iw and iwconfig

Thank you Mr.Elendig and ewaller for your answers.

OK, so human factor error here, I had "iw" aliased to iwconfig. Very embarrassing. I did think of the symlink, but not "type iw".
Some stupid alias I keyed in several years ago.

In any case, in terms of the "software Access Point" page, I went straight to the hostapd stage which didn't fail, so the iw check wasn't necessary in my case.

Thank you both for the comments!

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History: RedHat -> Slacker -> gentoo-> SuSE -> Ubuntu -> now Arch.