[solved maybe] Re: wireless giving trouble in Ubuntu recently

[H.S.]

H.S. wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have noticed that in the last few days, I am not able to connect via 
> the Networking GUI to my home wireless network. This on a Dell Inspiron 
> 5160 laptop using bcm43xx kernel module on a 2.6.15 kernel. Is there 
> something wrong in the networking GUI package or some related packages? 
>   The laptop has a broadcom 1350 mini pci card:
>   {~}> lspci | grep -i ethernet 0000:02:01.0 Ethernet controller: 
> Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
> 
> If I give a new essid and a wep key in the Networking GUI and try to 
> connect, I notice that the entries in /etc/network/interfaces are not 
> immediately updates.
> 
> Comments about this are welcome.
> 
> Thanks,
> ->HS
> 
> 

Last night I did some more reasearch on google and Ubuntu forums and I 
think I might finally got around the problem.

There are two main issues that I dealt with in this. The first one was 
sorting out the network manager issue and the second was regarding 
gnome-keyring.


I had configured some "locations" in the Networking GUI, I deleted all 
those locations. Then I shut down networking:
$> sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop

and edited /etc/network/interfaces file such that only two lines were 
present in it:
##########################
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
##########################
all other interfaces were deleted.

That 'cleaned' up my networking and the bare minimum interfaces file is 
supposed to let the network-manager handle the interfaces automatically 
on next reboot. Next, I wanted to reboot, but before doing so I made 
sure I had nm-applet in the Startup Programs tab in  System -> 
Preferences -> Sessions.

After rebooting, I had a clean interfaces file and got the nm-applet on 
the panel. Now if I clicked on the nm-applet, it showed the wired 
connection radio button and also all the wireless connections available 
at that time. Before connecting to a wireless network, it is a good idea 
to have gnome-keyring-manager package installed.

What happens is, when you select a wireless network to connect to via 
the nm-applet, it will ask you for the passphrase or the WEP key. Be 
careful to choose the proper selection about the key (whether it is a 
passpharse,  a HEX key or an ASCII key). That key is saved by nm-applet 
in your gnome-keyring in an encrypted form. So if you have your keyring 
working, it is fine. If not, Gnome will prompt you for a password for 
the keyring. The easiest option is to make it the same as your login 
password (I didn't, but I have since haven't found a way to change the 
password in the keyring that I once selected). So, to recap, nm-applet 
will ask you for a WEP key or passphrase, to store it in the keyring, 
gnome-keyring will ask you for a password with which to encrypt the 
information it saves. The next time you login, gnome-keyring will 
automatially use those WEP keys you saved like this.

At this point, you should be able to connect to a wireless network.

Now, in case you have already been using nm-applet, I am not sure how 
all this will workout. From my experience though (a short one yet), 
there may be a situation that you wanted to delete some network essid's 
and their keys from the memory of your nm-applet. This information is 
saved in the gconf-editor in:
/system/networking/wireless/networks/<essid>

Just remove the <essid> directory from the configuration editor and it 
will be forgotten by the nm-applet. However, the configuratior editor 
apparently doesn't give a "delete" option. I just logged off, deleted 
the /tmp/.gconf* directory, went to the 
~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks directory and deleted the 
directories of essids that I did not want. I reloged in and the 
nm-applet had forgotten about those.

Since doing the above procedure (got quite a bit of help from Ubuntu 
forums), I joined my home wireless networks (two of them) and switched 
between them and it was working okay. I then plugged the lan cable and 
nm-applet then disconnected the wireless networks and connected through 
lan. When lan was unplugged, it joined one of my preferred wireless 
networks automatically. It was pretty nice. I will try to verify this on 
the coming weekend.

Hope this helps. If I have made a mistake someplace or I have overlooked 
something, please feel free to comment.

regards,
->HS