Wireless laptop configuration problem

William Chapman jeddahbill at gmail.com
Wed Aug 3 16:42:02 UTC 2005


On 8/3/05, Christoph Georgi <christoph.georgi at web.de> wrote:
> hi david,
> 
> i doubt that William's problem has something to with the routing table.
> as his ifconfig output shows...
> 
> > wjc at trotter:~$ ifconfig
> > ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:09:5B:C4:0B:C6
> >           inet6 addr: fe80::209:5bff:fec4:bc6/64 Scope:Link
> >           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
> >           RX packets:493 errors:25041 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:25041
> >           TX packets:595 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
> >           collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
> >           RX bytes:81801 (79.8 KiB)  TX bytes:212868 (207.8 KiB)
> >           Interrupt:9 Memory:c8ae0000-c8af0000
> 
> ...he receives and transmittes packages on the interface (RX and TX).
> however, most packages (rather frames) received have errors... (that
> might very well be due to them being encrypted..)
> 
> Similarly, the dhclient output says, that packages are sent via ath0:
> 
> > Listening on LPF/ath0/00:09:5b:c4:0b:c6
> > Sending on   LPF/ath0/00:09:5b:c4:0b:c6
> 
> Nevertheless, checking the routing table is always a sensibel thing to
> do if packets are just "lost"..
> 
> 
> David wrote:
> <snip>
> > Wireless doesn't seem to work unless eth0 is configured and active first.
> > I don't know why, but I could reliably reproduce this problem. To fix it,
> > I configured both ethernet and wireless to be active, but that results in
> > TWO default routes and confuses everything. I couldn't convince the
> > control panel to only create one default route.
> >
> 
> that sounds rather odd to me.. what happens if you take eth0 down and
> then activate your wireless interface? does it not work? hmmm, is your
> lo interface up or down when wireless doesn't work? i had some problems
> with lo not being brought up during boot when you cancel the network
> script.. in this case i doubt that wireless will work properly, hence,
> bringing up eth0 (including lo?!) helps..?! could you check that?
> 
> chrisotph
> 
> --
> 
> 
> Christoph Georgi
> -----------------------------
> email.  christoph.georgi at web.de
> fon.    +49 (0)160 9790 3488
> 
> registered linux user #380268
> ubuntu 5.04 (ubuntu.com)
> 
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> ubuntu-users mailing list
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> 
To David, Christoph, Kleeman, & all,

Thanks for the excellent ideas!  

After freshly installing Hoary - this time with the Ethernet cable
(eth0) plugged in, and the wireless card (ath0) NOT installed (the
opposite configuration from my original install) - I have been able to
get wireless working properly both with and without WEP.  To do this I
needed to deactivate and de-configure eth0 in the Gnome control panel.
 I can now switch back and forth using the control panel, but would
not bet a week's pay that it will work every time.  Occasionally, I've
seen it "revert" to the old behavior, which required "cleaning house: 
" deactivating and de-configuring both, then bringing back the desired
port.  (In some cases I've had to reboot to get everything "to click"
according to the desired configuration.)

During this process I constantly monitored the state of
/etc/network/interfaces, and observed that the changes logically
reflected the desired configuration.

I believe a lot of what David said is indeed in effect in my
situation.  I think the configuration process is getting confused
under some circumstances, and before, I wasn't doing enough to "break
through" whatever was causing the problem.  This time I was more
aggressive with deactivating and de-configuring, in addition to
dis-connecting.

I had the router setup for "reserved IP addressing" by MAC address and
hostname.  I did indeed originally have two entries for this notebook
(which worked fine under WinXP), one for the wired port and one for
wireless.  For the time being I've deleted this, which may be why, as
David suggested, it's started to work!

To be full successful, of course, requires "understanding the animal,"
and this means understanding, at least to the command line level, the
ins & outs of configuring networks.  I will study David's comments and
notes, and continue to learn Linux.  In the meantime, thanks to you
all, I have a functional wireless notebook!!!

Ciao,

Bill Chapman

P.S.  I will be busy for a few days, but will add to this thread any
importing findings.  As always, however, I look forward to your input
anytime!




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