Turning wireless card on and off

Thrillhouse · 2007-11-09 01:03:53

I just got my new laptop and am putting Arch on it of course. It has the Intel 3945 card which is pretty common so I thought I'd use the iwlwifi driver. I followed the Wiki and even perused a couple other laptop wiki entries with the same card to see how they did it but none of them have worked correctly. I think the reason is because the actual card isn't turned on. When I boot into Windows the little wifi light comes on indicating the card is active and I can connect to a wireless network then but when I boot into Arch the light is off. iwconfig wlan0 essid mynetwork and iwconfig wlan0 key ******** both run without error but I don't have an IP address.

The only problem is there's no key combination to turn the card on and off. It's a little button that you slide one way to turn on bluetooth and wireless and the other way to turn it off. The bluetooth light is on in Linux but not the wireless. It's driving me crazy because I can't seem to find anything in the manual about it and the card is set to be turned on by default in the BIOS. What else can I do?

Preacher · 2007-11-09 10:53:01

Let us assume that your card is detected as WLAN0 and that you have an ACER PC. Try this solution

http://www.cakey.de/acerhk/

Then ...

ifconfig wlan0 up

bangkok_manouel · 2007-11-09 12:14:33

You can try this also:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=303897

Thrillhouse · 2007-11-10 00:31:19

@Preacher: I don't have an Asus PC so I don't think that's going to work.

@bangkok_manouel: That's probably the sort of thing I need but unfortunately that specific one doesn't work for me. I don't have an rf-kill file and I don't have near enough knowledge to adjust that script to my own needs.

I did find this in /var/log/messages if it would help anybody:
Nov 9 18:58:14 lappy ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

I'm pretty sure it was spit out when I tried to ifconfig up the device. It also appeared in dmesg.

However, I have made some progress. I've managed to connect to the network and get an IP address using wifi-radar but still can't browse the internet. Also, I'm not exactly sure which step in my guesswork got me the IP. I'm assuming it came after I did:
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid mynet
sudo iwconfig wlan0 key *********
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

iphitus · 2007-11-10 00:50:11

If the above commands worked, don't worry so much about the switch. Try configuring your wireless right away with something like netcfg2

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39505

James

Thrillhouse · 2007-11-10 01:00:35

Thanks, iphitus. I wish I could try that but pacman has been flaky for me ever since initial install.

 pacman -Sy testing/netcfg
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
error: failed retrieving file 'extra.db.tar.gz' from ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu : Service not available, closing control connection
error: failed to synchronize extra: Service not available, closing control connection
error: failed retrieving file 'community.db.tar.gz' from ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu : Service not available, closing control connection
error: failed to synchronize community: Service not available, closing control connection
error: repository 'testing' not found
error: 'testing/netcfg': no such repository

This often happens on pacman -Syu and I've run rankmirrors and tried many things to get it to work normally. It's working fine on my desktop. Could the 64 bit install be a factor? I'm near my wits' end. Nothing seems to be working the way it's supposed to on this machine.

ganja_guru · 2007-11-10 05:06:50

is the testing repository enabled in /etc/pacman.conf? You can also give wicd a try, which is in testing now.

The mirror you're using is down, it didn't work for me either. Try the easynews mirror, it may or may not giveyou the best ping times, but I've found it to be very reliable.

bangkok_manouel · 2007-11-10 11:31:06

edited: my stoopid mistakes are no good example

Last edited by bangkok_manouel (2007-11-10 17:07:51)

Thrillhouse · 2007-11-10 21:52:08

OK, I think I figured it out. I'm now using my wireless card to browse the Internet. I think what was happening was my wired interface (eth0) was conflicting with my wireless interface. Once I brought my wired connection down, I was able to connect with the wireless one.

Maybe someone can simplify the process for me now. I've disabled eth0 in rc.conf but in order to get the wireless up and running I have to bring up wlan0 with ifconfig, use iwconfig to configure the essid and key and then connect through wifi-radar (even though wifi-radar already contains the correct configuration). That means I can't just connect with wifi-radar after boot. I have to run those iwconfig and ifconfig commands first. I considered putting wlan0 as an interface in rc.conf but the Wiki entry I read said not to do that for the 3945 card. So is there any way to streamline this process?

And I guess Linux just doesn't send any power to the little light even though it does for the bluetooth one. That really doesn't boher me but it did throw me for a loop the first time around.

bangkok_manouel · 2007-11-11 02:16:08

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Profiles is definitely what you need to set up
Take a look at this first to avoid any confusion later: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ude … _Each_Boot

Arch Linux

#1 2007-11-09 01:03:53

Turning wireless card on and off

#2 2007-11-09 10:53:01

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

#3 2007-11-09 12:14:33

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

#4 2007-11-10 00:31:19

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

#5 2007-11-10 00:50:11

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

#6 2007-11-10 01:00:35

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

#7 2007-11-10 05:06:50

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

#8 2007-11-10 11:31:06

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

#9 2007-11-10 21:52:08

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

#10 2007-11-11 02:16:08

Re: Turning wireless card on and off

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