Not able to connect to WiFi

anirudh215 · 2011-05-30 06:18:41

Hi,
I am in an institute where I get wifi access everywhere. People using Ubuntu and MS have been able to start working right away. However I've not been able to connect to it. When I open wicd-client, the wireless network shows up as <hidden>. After I enter the password, it doesn't connect. It stalls at 'verifying password' and then pops an error. Don't know why. After this, I clicked on search for hidden networks and entered explicitly the ESSID of the network. Even after doing so, it does not connect to this network. It just tells me that authentication failed. What is going on?

tomk · 2011-05-30 06:23:41

Not much we can do without details - at the very least, if you want help with an error, include it in your post.

dmesg and/or other logs would also help you. And have you tried connecting manually? GUIs like wicd make it hard to see where things are failing.

anirudh215 · 2011-05-30 07:08:03

I did try connecting manually. I get a connection timed out error when I try to dhcp. I tried setting the channel mode to auto, but to no avail. I've gone over my wpa_supplicant to make sure all the details have been entered correctly and they have.

ewaller · 2011-05-30 20:38:47

Okay, the basics.
Please post the output of:
ifconfig -a
iwconfig
and
iwlist scan

anirudh215 · 2011-06-01 04:20:47

Here is the result of doing all 3:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 88:AE:1D:D8:CC:D3
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:7503 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3050 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3760621 (3.5 Mb) TX bytes:539108 (526.4 Kb)
Interrupt:29 Base address:0x6000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:26:C7:60:1B:DC
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"<hidden>"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.472 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=14 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off

wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 1C:AF:F7:6A:19:D3
Channel:13
Frequency:2.472 GHz (Channel 13)
Quality=54/70 Signal level=-56 dBm
Encryption key:on
ESSID:""
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
Bit Rates:9 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Mode:Master
Extra:tsf=0000006f421ac181
Extra: Last beacon: 1453ms ago
IE: Unknown: 000700000000000000
IE: Unknown: 010882848B960C183048
IE: Unknown: 03010D
IE: Unknown: 050400010000
IE: Unknown: 0706474220010D11
IE: Unknown: 2A0100
IE: Unknown: 32041224606C
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Preauthentication Supported
IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101000103A4000027A4000042435E0062322F00

ewaller · 2011-06-01 04:50:43

Okay, what I see is a hidden network that appears to be using WEP (as opposed to WPA / WPA2)
Your iwconfig output does not indicate you have a key set. I think your problem is that you are not setting both an ESSID and a Key.

Try

iwconfig essid <yournetworkname> key <yourkey> wlan0

from the command line. Then check the connection with iwconfig (no parameters) and see if it associates (It will show the six byte MAC address of the router if it associates)

Assuming it does, go ahead and try to assign / get an IP address (on my system, dhcpcd wlan0)

anirudh215 · 2011-06-01 05:01:20

That's odd. The network is WPA/WPA2-PSK encrypted. How come you see WEP?

iwconfig wlan0 essid 'name' key 'key'

and it tells me the key is not acceptable. I get error 8B2A.

Last edited by anirudh215 (2011-06-01 05:12:55)

ewaller · 2011-06-01 05:14:33

Sorry, you are correct -- I missed that further down in the output. It is getting late here (GMT-8)

Okay, so what happens with just

iwconfig essid <yournetworkname>

without a key. Then see if you associate. If so, then I would play around with wpa_suuplicant using wpa_cli

If, it doesn't associate -- well, I dunno

anirudh215 · 2011-06-01 05:18:41

When I leave the key out, the ESSID is set. Here is the output of iwconfig:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"name"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.472 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=14 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off

Last edited by anirudh215 (2011-06-01 05:18:59)

ewaller · 2011-06-01 05:44:50

I'm stumped. Sorry

anirudh215 · 2011-06-01 05:49:11

Darn. I already did whatever was on the wiki. None of that worked. Nobody here seems to know here either. Maybe I should go talk to the sysadmin in this institute.

riddle · 2011-06-01 05:51:38

wpa_passphrase ESSID PASSWORD > ~/wlan_file
wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c~/wlan_file &
dhcpcd wlan0

Does not work?

Last edited by riddle (2011-06-01 05:52:01)

anirudh215 · 2011-06-02 04:37:28

Nope.

riddle · 2011-06-02 17:31:46

try to connect by network manager wait for a while and than paste here you /var/log/messages.log

R00KIE · 2011-06-04 08:12:45

Are you sure you don't need to download and use a certificate with that connection? There should be a tutorial page on how to configure the connection on linux, have you tried that?

twilight0 · 2011-06-04 14:14:28

iwconfig does not support passphrases!

man iwconfig:

key/enc[ryption]
Used to manipulate encryption or scrambling keys and security mode.
To set the current encryption key, just enter the key in hex digits as XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX or XXXXXXXX. To set a key other than the cur‐
rent key, prepend or append [index] to the key itself (this won't change which is the active key). You can also enter the key as an ASCII
string by using the s: prefix. Passphrase is currently not supported.

Thats probably why he couldnt connect. Better use wicd-cli.

R00KIE · 2011-06-04 20:38:12

twilight0 wrote:

Thats probably why he couldnt connect. Better use wicd-cli.

The OP specifically mentioned it wasn't working when wicd was tried

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-30 06:18:41

Not able to connect to WiFi

#2 2011-05-30 06:23:41

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#3 2011-05-30 07:08:03

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#4 2011-05-30 20:38:47

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#5 2011-06-01 04:20:47

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#6 2011-06-01 04:50:43

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#7 2011-06-01 05:01:20

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#8 2011-06-01 05:14:33

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#9 2011-06-01 05:18:41

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#10 2011-06-01 05:44:50

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#11 2011-06-01 05:49:11

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#12 2011-06-01 05:51:38

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#13 2011-06-02 04:37:28

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#14 2011-06-02 17:31:46

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#15 2011-06-04 08:12:45

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#16 2011-06-04 14:14:28

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

#17 2011-06-04 20:38:12

Re: Not able to connect to WiFi

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