Arch Linux

jeffreyvos

Member

Registered: 2008-07-21

Posts: 4

Wifi Connectivity Issues

I followed the instructions for setting up a wireless connection found on the wiki, but my attempts have been unsuccessful.

I have an Everex Stepnote NC1500 laptop, which has the Atheros AR5005G wireless chipset. I'm new to Archlinux but not to Linux in general. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I'm stuck with the base system at the moment.

Below is the command line input and output from my computer when I tried to set up the wifi.

Thanks to everyone in advance!

# hwdetect --show-net
NET    : mii via-rhine mac80211 ath5k cfg80211
# lsmod | grep ath5k
ath5k                  92292  0
mac80211              130316  1 ath5k
# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Channel:0  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Tx-Power=0 dBm
          Retry min limit: 7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

# ifconfig wlan0 up
# iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0     No scan results
# iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys key **********
# dhcpcd wlan0
err, wlan0: timed out
warn, wlan0: using IPV4LL address 169.254.133.213
# ping -c 3 www.google.com
ping: unknown host www.google.com

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

After entering the essid etc, are you associated with the access point?

jeffreyvos

Member

Registered: 2008-07-21

Posts: 4

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

After entering that info, iwconfig returns this:

#iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"linksys"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Tx-Power=27 dBm
          Retry min limit: 7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B
          Encryption key:****-****-**
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

So it seems to have accepted the values but still won't connect. And I've read many reports of the wifi being turned off manually by a button on the laptop; I've checked that and the light indicates it's on. Turning it off by that button doesn't change any of the output.

kalasmannen

Member

From: Örebro, Sweden

Registered: 2008-02-27

Posts: 39

Website

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

How is your accesspoint configured? The

# iwlist scan

didn't return much, are you hiding SSID?

jeffreyvos

Member

Registered: 2008-07-21

Posts: 4

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

No, I'm not hiding SSID; I checked that setting early on.

Here's the output again:

# iwlist scan
lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

wmaster0  Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0     No scan results

#

When I've accessed my network on other systems, it is the only one within range. But no results are found by iwlist...I just had this working on Xubuntu on the same system a couple days ago; albeit that was automatically configured.

trontonic

Member

Registered: 2008-07-21

Posts: 80

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

"wavemon" is a fantastic utility for checking signal strength and the like.

yaourt -S wavemon

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

Check whether your network is wep or wpa. The basic commands like that only work for wep.

Also try doing

ifconfig ath0 up
iwlist ath0 scan

before doing the association commands.

vicayres

Member

From: Buckie, Scotland

Registered: 2005-10-06

Posts: 9

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

I had a similar problem, though in my case with Intel 3945 card. After much experimentation, I found that running iwconfig with my router's Lan port MAC address made it work. IE,

iwconfig wlan0 ap XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

jeffreyvos

Member

Registered: 2008-07-21

Posts: 4

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

It is WEP, although turning off the encryption doesn't change anything for me. Running iwconfig with my router's MAC address didn't seem to help either. At this point I'm rather confused and frustrated...I love the idea of Arch Linux but I just can't seem to get it to work...

vicayres

Member

From: Buckie, Scotland

Registered: 2005-10-06

Posts: 9

Re: Wifi Connectivity Issues

Try netcfg. See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netcfg

In my case (using WPA) I had to, after running iwconfig with my router's Lan MAC port address, set

scan=no

in the copied profile file.