Arch Linux

skale

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2006-08-04

Posts: 146

Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

^^see above

I am having some trouble with connecting to the Georgia Tech wireless network. I have an intel 4965 wireless chip, on a Thinkpad T61, running Arch Linux. I can connect to several unsecured networks just fine. The problem seems to be with the WEP password. In Knetworkmanager, I tried all the options, and none of them worked. I am certain I have the right password. I tried connecting using both ndiswrapper and the proper windows passwords, and with the "experimental" iwlwifi driver. Both worked fine with any other network (they were all unsecured) so I don't think it is a driver problem, but who knows.

I believe the culprit is the encryption itself. The network uses 128bit hexadecimal, and Knetworkmanager only has a "Passphrase" and "40/104bit HEX" option. Could that be the problem, and if so, what do I need to do to connect?

-Sameer

PS  Yes, I made another thread in linuxquestions.org.

print

Member

Registered: 2007-02-27

Posts: 174

Re: Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

I would suggest trying wicd and wlassistant. I've had the best (wireless) luck with the latter.

--print

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% whereis whatis whence which whoami whois who

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

I believe the culprit is the encryption itself. The network uses 128bit hexadecimal, and Knetworkmanager only has a "Passphrase" and "40/104bit HEX" option.

Useful WEP info here, also many other places.

As advised elsewhere, try it from first principles i.e. without networkmanager, with manual iwconfig/ifconfig commands. If that works, reapply the "bells and whistles" approach.

fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

Re: Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

I've used "first principles" approach for a long time because networkmanager would simply refuse to connect to the WEP network at school.  Now I'm using brain0's autowifi scripts (http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=33679) and they work like a charm.  They may be a bit tricky to configure at first (you'd have to read up on wpa_supplicant configuration) but once they're set up correctly they work great.

skale

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2006-08-04

Posts: 146

Re: Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

Well, I guess the problem is not with the key, then. 

I did it ifconfig-style.  Here is the relevant excerpt from rc.conf:

  lo="lo 127.0.0.1"
  eth0="dhcp"
  wlan0="dhcp"
  wlan_wlan0="wlan0 essid GTwireless key **********"
  INTERFACES=(lo eth0 wlan0)

To start it up I did
  source /etc/rc.conf
  ifconfig wlan0 up
  dhcpcd wlan0

It still doesn't connect.

Last edited by skale (2007-08-29 23:32:06)

fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

Re: Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

I would normally do is somewhat differently...
Something like this in /etc/rc.conf:

lo="lo 127.0.0.1"
ath0="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(lo ath0)
#...
gateway="default gw 192.168.1.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)

and then define your wireless details in /etc/conf.d/wireless

wlan_ath0="ath0 essid ******* key ********************"
WLAN_INTERFACES=(ath0)

replace "ath0" with whatever your wireless interface is called, of course, and do "sudo /etc/rc.d/network restart"
That should work if all the info is filled in correctly.

skale

Member

From: Atlanta, GA

Registered: 2006-08-04

Posts: 146

Re: Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

No luck.  I have no idea whatsoever what the problem is now.  I can connect to other wireless networks without WEP, but not this one.

holonic

Member

Registered: 2006-06-28

Posts: 8

Re: Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

Same problem here.

The thing is I just got my hands on a new laptop with a 4965 chip but until now I had a laptop with an atheros pcmcia card which connects perfectly to my network.

Basically I do :
iwconfig wlan0 essid <the_id> mode managed channel 7 key s:<the_wep_ascii_key>

And using the atheros laptop it gets the connection whereas the 4965 won't work.
I've tried to use both ndiswrapper and intel's driver, no luck.

The 4965 drivers don't seem too happy with WEP networks but setting the network insecure is not an option.

How can I get a glimpse of the messages the driver outputs (= where's the log file?) ?

Thanks!

holonic

Member

Registered: 2006-06-28

Posts: 8

Re: Unable to connect to school WEP network on Intel 4965

Okay I don't know how things turned out for the creator of this thread but as for me I got it working.

To those looking for help for this one chipset, I got it working like this :

#pacman -S iwlwifi iwlwifi-4965-ucode
#modprobe mac80211
#modprobe iwl4965
#iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid> mode managed key s:<ascii_key>
#ifconfig wlan0 up

and then run a dhcp client to get an address (for instance #dhclient wlan0)

Note that the thing that stuck me for a long time was to having specified the channel (compare the iwconfig command with the one from my previous post)
When I got rid of this one parameter everything worked perfectly.

The strange thing is that my other laptop with the atheros chip connects well with the channel specified.
Different implementations I guess...