Wireless NIC Not Detecting AP or Grabbing IP Address

[dzmoore]

Hello, this is my first post, and although this question is probably asked somewhere else on the internet, I have not been able to find a useful answer to my problem. I recently installed my integrated wireless NIC using ndiswrapper 1.2. I am running Fedora Core 3, 2.6.12-1.1372 on a 3203US compaq notebook. I think it is also called compaq r3000z or something. After installing ndiswrapper and installing the driver for my NIC, I was able to successfully add my wireless NIC, but when I go to activate it, it says "Determining IP information for wlan0... failed; no link present. Check cable?" The light for the NIC is on and running ndiswrapper -l shows: "Installed ndis drivers: bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present" so I'm fairly sure that the driver was successfully installed.

When I run iwconfig, I get:

[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension,
but has been compiled with version 17, therefore some driver features
may not be available...

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:off/any Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:25 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-46 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.


Could someone please give me some sort of idea as to why my NIC is not finding any Access Points or finding an IP address?

[blueuk]

Hi there, this is my first answer. I've had a similar problem on a sony vaoi VGN-T1XP with an intel centrino chipset. The only way I could get my WLAN to work was to specifically start things up in the following order: (as root)

/sbin/iwconfig eth1 essid "YOURSIDHERE"
/sbin/iwconfig eth1 key open YOURWEPKEYHEREIFYOYHAVEONE
/sbin/ifconfig eth1 up
/sbin/dhclient eth1

hope this helps, either way I'd suggest you try each step manually to see which step causes problems

regards

[dzmoore]

i still have the same problem.

[chili555]

Please let us see the output of /sbin/iwlist scan as well as cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0.

Thanks.

[dzmoore]

[root@localhost ~]# /sbin/iwlist scan
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension,
but has been compiled with version 17, therefore some driver features
may not be available...

wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00
ESSID:"linksys"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:0/100 Signal level:-51 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Encryption key:off
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
Bit Rate:2 Mb/s
Bit Rate:5.5 Mb/s
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=0

sit0 Interface doesn't support scanning.
--------------------------------------------------------------
[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
IPV6INIT=no
ONBOOT=no
USERCTL=no
PEERDNS=yes
GATEWAY=
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=00:90:4b:5a:bf:da
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
ESSID=wireless1
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Managed
RATE=11Mb/s

[chili555]

When wlan0 scans, it is seeing an AP named "linksys" When you try to activate wlan0, it says it wants an AP named "wireless1" Ditto, channel 6 vs. channel 1. Hence, no connection.

I would change CHANNEL=1 to CHANNEL=Auto and RATE=11Mb/s to RATE=Auto and ESSID=wireless1 to ESSID=any. You can do this with gedit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 as root. Be sure to save.

Then I would do /sbin/ifdown wlan0. Go back into your Network Configurator and activate wlan0. If you get an IP address, ping -c5 192.168.1.1, or whatever the IP is of your router, and then ping -c5 www.fedoraforum.org.

Let us know the result.

[dzmoore]

Still not working...

this is my config file:
# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
IPV6INIT=yes
ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=no
PEERDNS=yes
GATEWAY=
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=00:90:4b:5a:bf:da
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
ESSID=
CHANNEL=6 //i tried putting "Auto", "AUTO", and "auto", but all would throw an error when i tried to edit with networkconfig
MODE=Auto
RATE=Auto
-----------------------------
[root@localhost ~]# /sbin/iwlist scan
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension,
but has been compiled with version 17, therefore some driver features
may not be available...

wlan0 No scan results
sit0 Interface doesn't support scanning.
------------------------------------------------------------

[kg4cbk]

Just comment out or delete the CHANNEL line.

[dzmoore]

commented out the channel line and the essid line, still "Determining IP....failed"

[kg4cbk]

Have you tried NetworkManager? I had a centrino chip set that worked sometimes using NetworkManager. I was not able to get the centrino drivers to work with out it. I finally bought a Netgear WG511 card that works well with driverloader.

I think there is a serious problem with wireless networking in general. There are to many of these types of problems with different chip sets. If you can, try a different network card.