Mint and wireless networking

[Pete Holsberg]

Pete Holsberg keyed the following on 6/7/2007 11:25 AM:
> Just for fun (this is a hobby, after all!), I decided to install Linux 
> Mint 3.0 Cassandra to see how it handled my wireless card.
>
> At first it didn't recognize it but I found the Admin tool for 
> installing Windows drivers, and then lspci showed the card as a Marvell 
> 88e8335 which I knew to be correct from my Kubuntu installation.
>
> I went to Network Tools and found two wireless devices, wlan0 and 
> wlan0:avahi. Attempting to configure the first, I noted that it saw my 
> wireless network and my neighbor's. I set in the WEP password, set it 
> for DHCP and went to try a ping to my router.
>
> No joy!! What have I forgotten about?
>
> Additional information. Network Tools has a status panel for each 
> device. Under wlan0, all the vales were "not available". Under 
> wlan0:avahi, everything had a value -- even the hardware address! 
> However, the values were not related to my network (eg., wrong IP 
> address) and when I clicked on Configure, it said "Interface does not 
> exist".
>
> I'm puzzled.
>
> Thanks for your guidance.
>   
I ran miniWifi.py and got the following:

mrv8000c : driver installed
    device (11AB:1FAA) present
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:off/any 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated  
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Sensitivity=-200 dBm 
          RTS thr=2346 B   Fragment thr=2346 B  
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0B:DB:B5:C7:66 
          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)
          Interrupt:16

eth0:avah Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0B:DB:B5:C7:66 
          inet addr:169.254.8.251  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          Interrupt:16

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback 
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:4205 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4205 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:341456 (333.4 KiB)  TX bytes:341456 (333.4 KiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:E7:1B:09:49 
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:79 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:6874 (6.7 KiB)  TX bytes:3933 (3.8 KiB)
          Interrupt:17 Memory:fe9f0000-fea00000

wlan0:ava Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:E7:1B:09:49 
          inet addr:169.254.3.201  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          Interrupt:17 Memory:fe9f0000-fea00000

There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 13699
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:18:e7:1b:09:49
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:18:e7:1b:09:49
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:0b:db:b5:c7:66
Sending on   LPF/eth0/00:0b:db:b5:c7:66
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
receive_packet failed on eth0: Network is down
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
send_packet: Network is down
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

-------------------------
* I. scanning WIFI PCI devices...
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* II. querying ndiswrapper...
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* III. querying iwconfig...
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* IV. querying ifconfig...
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* V. querying DHCP...
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* VI. querying nslookup google.com...