[solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

n00b · 2011-04-23 02:05:53

To summarize:

I just installed arch on my netbook from the core CD and I have no Internet until my wifi is working. I *THINK* I have installed my driver properly and the problem is that I can't associate to the Access Point or get an IP. And I'd like to point out that I have read several pages of the documentation over and over again. I'm at a point where I just can't get anywhere.

I'm going to list everything I'm doing because I'm very new to this procedure and my mistake could be anywhere. Please bare with me.

I have a Broadcom 4312 [14e4:4315].
According to the documentation, for my card I should use the broadcom-wl driver. I downloaded hybrid-portsrc_x86_32-v5_100_82_38.tar.gz, extracted it, and went into the dir and typed makepkg. This produced a wl.ko file.

According to the documentation I need to remove any other modules then load my new wl module.
These are the commands I've been using:
rmmod b43
rmmod ssb
rmmod wl (there isn't a wl loaded usually but i issue this command just to be sure)

modprobe lib80211
modprobe lib80211_crypt-tkip

Then I insert the newly made module wl.ko:

insmod wl.ko

At this point my card shows up as eth1 after I type iwconfig. It looks like it's recognized fine. However it's not associated with anything.

iwconfig:
eth1 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"" Nickname:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:24 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Managementmode:All packets received
Link Quality=5/5 Signal level=0 dBm Noise level=0 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

I bring the card up with ifconfig eth1 up.

I type iwlist scan and it scans and returns results no problem.

dmesg | tail returns:

lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'TKIP'
wl: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
wl 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
wl 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
eth1: Broadcom BCM4315 802.11 Hybrid Wireless Controller 5.100.82.38 <----** Looks good I think, right? **
NTFS driver 2.1.29 [Flags: R/W MODULE].
NTFS volume version 3.1.
CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 15000 nsec

** I think I'm good until this point. **

I can't for the life of me, get it to associate with the Access Point. Access point is using WEP. (I know about the security issues surrounding WEP so don't worry about it thanks.)

As far as I know there are 2 ways to try and associate with the Access Point. One is with the iwconfig command and the other is with wpa_supplicant

iwconfig eth1 essid networkname key 1234567890

If I try to use the key option it gives me an error:
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; invalid argument

If I don't use the key option and just issue 'iwconfig eth1 essid networkname' it returns no error however i'm still not associated with any access point.

Using wpa_supplicant:

First I issued this command to setup my wpa_supplicant.conf file:

wpa_passphrase networkname password > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

As far as I know my wap_supplicant.conf file looks good.

Next I:

wpa_supplicant -Dwext -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

This returns:
ioct1[SIOCGIWSCAN]: Resource temporarily unavailable
ioct1[SIOCGIWSCAN]: Invalid argument
Then it just seems to stall...

Sometimes there is an open wifi network that I can try to get on. It's really low signal but sometimes i can logon in ubuntu.
I tried iwconfig eth1 essid opennetworkname
then dhcpcd eth1

But dhcpcd never works.

dhcpcd: eth1: broadcasting for lease
dhcpcd: eth0: waiting for carrier
dhcpcd: timed out

So basically, I can't associate and dhcpcd always times out.

Last edited by n00b (2011-04-24 01:30:25)

Dans564 · 2011-04-23 02:18:34

my advice would be to install networkmanager. It makes dealing with wifi way easier imho. here is the wiki page https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NetworkManager
setup is easy and then you should have no problem with wifi

Last edited by Dans564 (2011-04-23 02:22:02)

n00b · 2011-04-23 02:30:16

Thanks for the reply, however I'm not sure I can use network manager or wicd. I have no gui and I also have no internet connection when in arch so I can't use pacman. I just installed arch and I can't update or do anything until I can get on the network.

xiaq · 2011-04-23 02:35:52

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Of … f_Packages (this wiki page is out of date though) on how to pacman offline. Also, NetworkManager has a CLI interface nm-cli and wicd has a TUI interface.

xiaq · 2011-04-23 02:38:23

Another suggestion: What about setting up an open wireless network with a home router? It's unsafe but once you have installed NetworkManager or wicd you can turn it off.

n00b · 2011-04-23 02:44:12

Thanks xiaq but I don't have the option of changing the networks. -- they're not mine. They are shared and I am just a user.

However there is one open network that I can sometimes use (with low signal) I mentioned it in the original post, I get the same response. No association and no IP.

Dans564 · 2011-04-23 12:41:56

no Ethernet connections around?

ewaller · 2011-04-23 16:12:21

Lets start with the basics.

Does iwscan list show any access points.
If not, take your best shot at making a connection, and post the output if iwconfig

trash · 2011-04-23 21:20:35

just a thought... you might want to

lsmod

or more likely

lsmod | less

to see if there is more than one wireless module loaded.
Some configuration may load different modules than others, especially if there are different hardware revisions.

edit:
I just read that sometimes broadcom ethernet modules can conflict with wireless modules. Maybe try unloading ethernet and then loading wireless?

Last edited by trash (2011-04-23 21:31:59)

n00b · 2011-04-24 01:36:14

Solution:
I ended up switching drivers. I used the b43 driver instead because it was already supported by the kernel and I only had to load the firmware which was clearly explained in the documentation.

Also I had another thread going but apparantly the mods deleted it? I was sure my wireless card was working correctly but I could not associate to a WEP network no matter what. Reason being was I had to include in the key section either 'restricted' or '[1]' so it knew it's a 40 bit key.

example: iwconfig wlan0 essid NETWORKNAME key [1] 1234567890

iwconfig wlan0 essid NETOWRKNAME key 1234567890 would never work.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-04-23 02:05:53

[solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#2 2011-04-23 02:18:34

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#3 2011-04-23 02:30:16

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#4 2011-04-23 02:35:52

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#5 2011-04-23 02:38:23

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#6 2011-04-23 02:44:12

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#7 2011-04-23 12:41:56

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#8 2011-04-23 16:12:21

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#9 2011-04-23 21:20:35

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

#10 2011-04-24 01:36:14

Re: [solved] No wifi on netbook. Please help. Been struggling for days.

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