the infamous linux wifi monster strikes

[Leonard Chatagnier]

--- On Tue, 4/14/09, wirechief <silvermachineman at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: wirechief <silvermachineman at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: the infamous linux wifi monster strikes
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 6:10 PM
> Well I would issue  dhclient eth0  or eth1  whichever is
> detected. see
> how that works.
> 
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 6:44 PM, Robert Holtzman
> <holtzm at cox.net> wrote:
> > Sorry for the length of this but I figured too much is
> better than too
> > little.
> >
> > This my my first foray into networking. After much
> searching in forums,
> > archives, google and more I'm down to posting
> this.
> >
> > Running Hardy on an Athlon 5200+ on a desktop. Also a
> Dell Latitude
> > (used) laptop with Hardy, a Broadcom BCM5705 ethernet
> controller and an
> > IntelPRO/Wireless 2200BG network controller (so says
> lspci). The desktop
> > is hard wired to a Linksys WRT54GL router. I'm
> using *spit* Cox
> > broadband. When I first got the laptop it would detect
> a number of
> > networks. After I configured the router it detected,
> in addition, the
> > access point. Now it detects nothing. At first I could
> ping the router
> > from both computers.Now the laptop shows
> "Destination Host Unreachable".
> > Also, at first, /etc/resolv.conf showed 192.168.1.1,
> the router. Now it
> > shows the Cox nameservers."lshw -C network"
> shows eth1 with the correct
> > information including the ipw2200 module and driver.
> It also says
> > "wireless=unassociated". Sounds
> ominous."iwconfig" gives
> >
> > eth1      unassociated  ESSID:off/any
> >           Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access
> Point: Not-Associated
> >           Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm  
> Sensitivity=8/0
> >           Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off  
> Fragment thr: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
> >
> > "ifconfig" gives
> >
> > eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr
> 00:15:00:4a:a3:4c
> >           UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500
>  Metric:1
> >           RX packets:1374 errors:0 dropped:0
> overruns:0 frame:0
> >           TX packets:96 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:5 Base address:0xa000
> Memory:fafef000-fafeffff
> >
> > eth1:avahi Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr
> 00:15:00:4a:a3:4c
> >           inet addr:169.254.4.252
>  Bcast:169.254.255.255
> > Mask:255.255.0.0
> >           UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500
>  Metric:1
> >           Interrupt:5 Base address:0xa000
> Memory:fafef000-fafeffff
> >
> > /etc/network/interfaces shows:
> >
> > auto lo
> > iface lo inet loopback
> >
> > # The primary network interface
> > auto eth0
> > #iface eth0 inet dhcp
> >
> > iface eth1 inet dhcp
> > wpa-psk
> d2719392f568b4954ceb9f64da69382e157a996aa81a86833c5955470bc2f6ab
> > wpa-driver wext
> > wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
> > wpa-proto WPA
> > wpa-ssid linksys_OW_32486
> >
> > There was a box in the Network Manager drop down to
> enable wireless. Now
> > it's gone.
> >
> > Being a network noob I'm clueless as to how to
> proceed. Any help would
> > be appreciated.
> >
> >
NM has been troublesome with wifi cards and many on the list have switched to wicd which will remove NM. If you wand to give wicd a try then add to your sources.list file this mirror:
deb http://apt.wicd.net/ intrepid extras

Run "sudo aptitude update"
"sudo aptitude install wicd"
Without the quotes, of course.  You may find that your wifi card just works after installing wicd. Reboot just to be safe.

No expert here but, if you want to give NM another try, then try adding the nameserver that worked before in resolv.conf and using NM add the ESSID to the wireless setup if you can find it; maybe using the drop down menus. I have wicd installed so can't check for you.
My best advice would be to switch to wicd ipo NM.  Personally, I could never get NM to keep a stable wifi setup and so have many othrs.  Never had any trouble with wicd.  HTH.
Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net