A number of problemsu

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 02:24:00AM -0400, Ben Novack wrote:

> On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:12:15 -0700, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at canonical.com> wrote:
> > The "network name" is used for the ESSID
> > (https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1295).  Currently, there
> > doesn't seem to be a place to configure the WEP key in the GUI configurator.
> > Enough people have asked about it that I think it deserves a bug report as
> > well.
> 
> Hmmmm.... 
> 
> Okay, so it's not available in the GUI. I can live with that - if
> there's a way to do it with text files. (Which I assume there is, this
> being Linux and all.) Where can I go to do it?

/etc/network/interfaces

Documentation about the wireless-specific directives in this file can be
found here:

/usr/share/doc/wireless-tools/README.Debian

> I can create connections. If I try to click the 'active' checkbox,
> however (ie, to enable the connection) one of two things will happen:
> The Networking setup program will hang, eventually prompting me to
> force-quit, or the box will desselect itself in a second or two.

The UI will be unresponsive while it attempts DHCP; if (for example) the
ESSID or WEP key is missing or incorrect, this will cause the program to
appear to hang.

You might look at "ps aux" output and see what processes are running when it
is in this state; I suspect dhclient.

> Note that on this same unsecured wireless network (Well, it's MAC
> filtered, but no WEP or WPA), another laptop with a PCMCIA wifi card, also
> running the Warty prerelease, has no problems getting on. In fact, it was
> my friend's amazement that his card was detected with no problems that
> made me decide to go Ubuntu.

Glad to hear it.  What kind of card is it?  We're collecting success/failure
reports here:

http://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport

> > xsupplicant sounds like the kind of thing that we should have on the CD,
> > packaged and ready to go.  It seems to have been added to Debian recently;
> > I'll see if it's suitable for a late inclusion in Warty.  Meanwhile, here's
> > a package built for Warty:
> > 
> > http://people.no-name-yet.com/~mdz/temp/xsupplicant_1.0-1_i386.deb
> > 
> > If you can find a way to get that onto your system, it should get you going.
> > Install it with "sudo dpkg --install xsupplicant_1.0-1_i386.deb"
> > 
> > In the case of OpenSSL, it's looking for the development library, while you
> > probably only installed the command-line tools.  We don't ship development
> > libraries on the CD (there isn't nearly enough space), though we do include
> > the compiler and associated tools.
> 
> Wow, many thanks for the package. 
> 
> How would I go about getting the development library? I'm having
> enough success with the usb key that I'm reasonably confident I can
> get files on to install them, if I know where to get them from - I'll
> just download them in Windows and dump them onto the usb key from
> there. I'm looking at a chicken-and-egg situation here, since proper
> apt-getting requires network access, which requires xsupplicant, which
> requires openssl, which requires apt-get...

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-dev_0.9.7d-3_i386.deb

You might also need bison and flex, according to the build-dependencies of
the Debian package.

-- 
 - mdz