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#1 2008-04-17 18:10:27

finferflu
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From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
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Can you help me with this connection?

Today I have brought my laptop with me in the library. The university provides wifi for all the students. However I haven't been able to get connected properly, and I have wasted about one hour in trying to do so.

I have tried both with netcfg and wicd, but none of them worked. So here is the page showing how to get connected. And this is my netcfg profile:

CONNECTION="wireless"
INTERFACE="wlan0"
SECURITY="none"
ESSID="university"
IP="dhcp"

Using that as a profile didn't work, namely iwconfig showed the essid as "Off/Any" or something like that. So, in order to get a connection I had to assign the parameters manually, like this:

ifconfig wlan0 essid university channel 11 mode ad-hoc

This way I was able to get the wireless connected, but I couldn't reach the net. Pinging google.com gave me "unknown host". Using the web browser didn't redirect me to the university login page as it should have done.

I have also tried to issue the "dhclient" command, but it timed out, after many failed attempts.

Trying with Wicd gave me the same results: even though it showed me I was connected it didn't work.

To be sure, I also tried to connect to an essid named "Free Public WiFi". And the results were exactly the same.

Tomorrow I will need to go to the library again, having the internet is a great benefit when you are writing essays (mainly for consulting dictionaries and wikipedia), so could anyone give me a hand please?

Thanks a lot smile


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#2 2008-04-17 18:15:27

brebs
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Registered: 2007-04-03
Posts: 3,742

Re: Can you help me with this connection?

You still need routing, e.g.:

route -n
route add default gw 192.168.0.1

And DNS - install bind, then you don't need to rely on their DNS server.

pacman -S bind

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#3 2008-04-17 18:21:11

finferflu
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From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
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Re: Can you help me with this connection?

How do I know that the default gw is 192.168.0.1? If it's not that, I really don't know how to find out...
Also, do I really need bind?

Thank you smile


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#4 2008-04-17 19:28:35

tomk
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From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: Can you help me with this connection?

Post your iwconfig output after you do the iwconfig entry above (I'm assuming you meant "iwconfig wlan0 ...").

Install bind if you want, but it's overkill IMO.

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#5 2008-04-17 19:35:43

finferflu
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From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
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Re: Can you help me with this connection?

Yes, I meant iwconfig wlan0, but I can't post it right now. I need to be in the library, which will happen tomorrow. However it was quite similar to what I have now (my home wireless connection):

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"NETGEAR"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:18:4D:7C:42:5E   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B   
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:57/100  Signal level:-59 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

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#6 2008-04-18 09:39:46

finferflu
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From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
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Re: Can you help me with this connection?

I am now connected to the university wifi. But I have no idea of how this happened. After fiddling around with iwconfig and wicd I *magically* got connected.

What I did was scanning for interfaces:

> iwlist wlan0 scan                                                        [~]  
wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:1D:A1:76:BC:70
                    ESSID:"university"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality:23/100  Signal level:-81 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:off
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=100
                    Extra:atim=0

Then trying to connect through iwconfig:

iwconfig wlan0 essid university mode managed channel 6

iwconfig wlan0 showed me I was connected but the Link Quality was 0.
So I tried route and had no output (apart from the headings, obviosly).

So I stopped the network daemon and started the wicd one. Then opened wicd and tried to connect, but the connection failed.
So I ran dhclient:

 > sudo dhclient wlan0                                                      [~]  
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 10734
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.6
Copyright 2004-2007 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:1a:73:e4:ed:b3
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:1a:73:e4:ed:b3
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 15
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

 > route -n                                                                 [~]  
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface

Then I tried to reconnect with wicd, and this time I got connected. Why and how? I have no idea.

This is my iwconfig output:

> iwconfig wlan0                                                           [~]  
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"university"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:1D:A1:76:BC:70   
          Bit Rate=5.5 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B   
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:21/100  Signal level:-82 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

and this is my route output:

 > route -n                                                                 [~]  
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
130.88.208.0    0.0.0.0         255.255.254.0   U     0      0        0 wlan0
0.0.0.0         130.88.209.250  0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 wlan0

Do you have any idea of what could have happened to get me connected?

Thanks smile


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#7 2008-04-18 18:30:26

finferflu
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From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
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Re: Can you help me with this connection?

Me again... I'm back from the library. I had to leave for an hour or so, so I disconnected my machine (no way I'm leaving my laptop unattended). When I came back I wasn't able to get connected again, but I have notice that the only time I got connected was only when there was a managed mode connection, all the other times there were only ad-hoc mode connections.

So I guess that's where the problem lies, but what does that mean?


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#8 2008-04-18 19:31:15

tomk
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From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: Can you help me with this connection?

Managed is the correct mode when connecting to an access point. Ad-Hoc is for direct wifi connections between two computers, with no access point.

man iwconfig has all the details, as do many online resources.

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#9 2008-04-18 19:33:35

finferflu
Forum Fellow
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
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Re: Can you help me with this connection?

Ah, that explains everything.
I did a man iwconfig in order to find out more about ad-hoc, but to be honest I didn't understand or find enough information. On the other hand I didn't have access to the internet when I was looking for that, and when I posted that stuff I was just back from the library, and too tired for reading anything tongue

Thanks for your help tomk smile


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"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- A. de Saint-Exupery

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#10 2008-04-21 11:49:11

jonkristian
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From: Norway
Registered: 2007-03-09
Posts: 101
Website

Re: Can you help me with this connection?

I find that very often, doing it manual with iwconfig and dhcpcd works better than using the scripts in network.d, I don't think the scripts are entirely stable yet...
I usually do iwlist scan, iwconfig wlan0 essid essidname, iwconfig wlan0 ap xx:xx:xx:xx:xx, iwconfig wlan0 key ..., and then dhcpcd wlan0


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