Wireless configuration weirdness

Shagbag · 2006-12-03 16:36:49

I have an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 PCI card.
I followed the Wireless Setup wiki to the letter.
I downloaded and installed the ipw3945 package from the repos.
I altered my /etc/rc.conf as follows:

MODULES=(ipw3945)
eth2="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(lo eth0 eth2)
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng !hotplug !pcmcia network netfs crond portmap fam dbus hal avahi-daemon alsa ipw3945d)

I altered by /etc/conf.d/wireless as follows:

wlan_eth2="eth2 essid ShagNet"
WLAN_INTERFACES=(eth2)

Where "ShagNet" is the name of my wireless network.

The problem is that when I reboot and the startup scripts whiz by, I get the error message:

:: Starting Network
error for wireless request "Set ESSID (8BIA)":
    SET failed on device eth2; No such device.

I just don't understand what the problem is.
After boot I ran:

iwconfig eth2 essid ShagNet

and got:

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.

eth2      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"ShagNet"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:18:4D:3C:DC:E2
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:15 dBm
          Retry limit:15   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=89/100  Signal level=-38 dBm  Noise level=-39 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:171   Missed beacon:0

So I know that 'eth2' is the correct name for my wireless card. But why the 'no such device' error in the boot scripts? What am I doing wrong/what haven't I done right?

Also, I can't seem to get internet access even when I'm connect by the above iwconfig command. For example, I can't load any pages from any URLs. Do I need to do something more, eg. does my user need to join the 'network' group?

Kind regards
A Frustrated n00b

chrismortimore · 2006-12-03 17:07:37

For the boot message, I don't know.

For not having access to your internet, make sure you have dhcpcd (or your favourate dhcp client) running on eth2. Verify that it has set your systen up properly by checking the outputs of "ifconfig eth2", "route" and "cat /etc/resolv.conf".

tardo · 2006-12-03 17:22:54

Or you could set your ipw3945 daemon to load before network. change

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng !hotplug !pcmcia network netfs crond portmap fam dbus hal avahi-daemon alsa ipw3945d)

to

DAEMONS=(syslog-ng !hotplug !pcmcia ipw3945d network netfs crond portmap fam dbus hal avahi-daemon alsa)

Note the positions of ipw3945d in both of them. You also don't need eth2 in your iwopts.

Shagbag · 2006-12-03 17:33:40

Thanks, both of you.
tardo's suggestion cleared up the bootscript issue, ie. I put 'ipw3945d' before 'network' in DAEMONS=() in my /etc/rc.conf file.

But I still can't load pages in Konqueror.

[n00b@archlinux ~]$ ifconfig eth2
eth2      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:DE:36:3F:30
          inet addr:192.168.0.3  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::218:deff:fe36:3f30/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:27 errors:0 dropped:7 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:4987 (4.8 Kb)  TX bytes:5702 (5.5 Kb)
          Interrupt:18 Base address:0xa000 Memory:b3000000-b3000fff

n00b@archlinux ~]$ route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.0.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
192.168.0.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth2
default         192.168.0.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth2
default         192.168.0.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0

[n00b@archlinux ~]$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 192.168.0.1

What am I doing wrong here?

tardo · 2006-12-03 17:55:26

You can't have both eth0 (hard line) and eth2 (wireless) connected at the same time (or perhaps you can, I haven't figured out a way to use them simultaneously). If you're using wireless, unplug your hard line, and vice versa.
You can also install ifplugd which will do it for you. You should also be in the network group by default, if not I'd add it.

Shagbag · 2006-12-03 18:10:15

Thanks for the tip.
I unplugged my ethernet cable and rebooted.
It now works

Now I've just got to set up WPA...

chrismortimore · 2006-12-03 20:06:46

tardo wrote:

You can't have both eth0 (hard line) and eth2 (wireless) connected at the same time (or perhaps you can, I haven't figured out a way to use them simultaneously).

Look up interface bonding, I use it to make my laptop switch from wired to wireless when I unplug the cable, and vice versa.

Shagbag · 2006-12-04 10:39:10

chrismortimore wrote:

Look up interface bonding, I use it to make my laptop switch from wired to wireless when I unplug the cable, and vice versa.

I looked it up. Am I correct in thinking I only need to install ifenslave from current and modify /etc/conf.d/bonding? If so, would it be too much to ask if you could give me some guidance on the configuration steps? My ethernet nic is eth0 and my wireless nic is eth2.

chrismortimore · 2006-12-04 12:11:17

Shagbag wrote:

I looked it up. Am I correct in thinking I only need to install ifenslave from current and modify /etc/conf.d/bonding? If so, would it be too much to ask if you could give me some guidance on the configuration steps? My ethernet nic is eth0 and my wireless nic is eth2.

Basically yeah, but you need to do a bit more to get it to automatically switch from wired to wireless and back when you plug and unplug the ethernet cable. I don't configure mine through the Arch network scripts, I have my own (because I have some really daft network settings for other networks, and found the Arch scripts too restrictive). Here is how I set mine up anyway, it may give you some hints.

These are the commands I run to start the interface (although they are actually generated dynamically by my fancy perl scripting...):

modprobe bonding mode=1 miimon=100
ifconfig bond0 up
ifenslave bond0 eth0 wlan0
iwconfig wlan0 [WIRELESS_SETTINGS]
dhcpcd bond0
sleep 3
enslaveactive

The modprobe options are important, the "mode=1" sets bonding to use either one or another of the interfaces, but not both (you can do load balancing and stuff, but I don't).
The ifenslave line tells the kernel what interfaces you want linked to bond0.
The iwconfig line is just as normal, as is dhcpcd (except using bond0 as the interface name).
The sleep line is just to let things settle down, I've forgotten why it's needed, but I can wait 3 second to be honest.

"enslaveactive" is a script I did myself (depends on ifplugd), which is as follows:

#!/bin/bash
if [ "`/usr/sbin/ifplugstatus eth0 | grep "unplugged"`" == "" ]; then
        /sbin/ifenslave -c bond0 eth0
else
        /sbin/ifenslave -c bond0 wlan0
fi

Basically, every time it is called, it checks to see if eth0 has a cable attached, and then activates eth0 or wlan0 as required. The command "/sbin/ifenslave -c bond0 [INTERFACE]" simply tells bond0 to use [INTERFACE] for the connection.

Then you configure ifplugd to run "enslaveactive" whenever eth0 changes state.

As for setting it through the Arch scripts, I can't help you. But that should hopefully at least get you going.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-12-03 16:36:49

Wireless configuration weirdness

#2 2006-12-03 17:07:37

Re: Wireless configuration weirdness

#3 2006-12-03 17:22:54

Re: Wireless configuration weirdness

#4 2006-12-03 17:33:40

Re: Wireless configuration weirdness

#5 2006-12-03 17:55:26

Re: Wireless configuration weirdness

#6 2006-12-03 18:10:15

Re: Wireless configuration weirdness

#7 2006-12-03 20:06:46

Re: Wireless configuration weirdness

#8 2006-12-04 10:39:10

Re: Wireless configuration weirdness

#9 2006-12-04 12:11:17

Re: Wireless configuration weirdness

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