wireless

[pugliese]

I have tried to using wicd to set up wireless with WEP.  I see availabe wireless routers and when I connect the gui shows connected and I see an ip address.  However I can not ping from another computer on the LAN or I cannot download a page in a browser.

I installed TC on a eeepc 900a which has an Athos wireless and works with the 900a linux os

Any suggestions
Tony

[tinypoodle]

Please be more precise.
What is the relation between wireless and LAN with your setup?

[pugliese]

ATT DSL  service with 2Wire router and I have 4 computers on the network 3 wireless and 1 wired.

I have no problems getting through to the internet with TC with the Assus eeepc 900a when  connected by a cable.

[maro]

Are you only using the WiFi or do you have (at the same time) also an ethernet connection?

So to get some idea I wonder if you could post the output of
    ifconfig -a ; cat /etc/resolv.conf ; route ; iwconfig

[pugliese]

Maro,

on the Asus 900a that TC resides I use Ethernet to connect and download wicd-2.6. 
Connected with the Ethernet I enter:

   sudo wicd-start;
   applications->wicdNetworkManager
   I see several available networks;

I then unplug the Ethernet and:

   Select Properties
   enter WPA Hex key
   Select Connect

   then I see ip address is assigned

    Open a tc terminal and do the commands you requested:

tc@box ~$:  ifconfig -a

dummy0   ...................

eth0         ..................

lo             ...................

wlan0      Link encap:Ethernet  Hwaddr 00:22:43:06:09::84
                inet addr:192:158.1.72   ..........................................
                UP BROADCATS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
                RX packets:806 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
                TX packets:63 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
                collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
                 RX bytes:34457   (33.6 KiB) TX bytes:602 (5.9 KiB)


tc@box ~$: cat /ect/resolv.conf: route; iwconfig

search gateway.2wire.net
nameserver 192.168.1.254
Kernel IP routing table
Desination     Gateway           Genmask              flags   Metric  Ref    Use   iface
127.0.0.1       *                       255.255.255.255 UH       0        0       0       lo
192.168.1.0   *                       255.255.255.0     U         0        0       0       eth0
192.168.1.0   *                       255.255.255.0     U         0        0       0       wlan0
default           192.168.1.254   0.0.0.0                UG       0        0       0       wlan0
default           192.168.1.254   0.0.0.0                UG       0        0       0       eth0
lo                no wireless extensions.
dummy0     no wireless extensions.     
eth0           no wireless extensions.     

wlan0         IEEE802.11bg  ESSID:"2WIRE72"
                   Mode:Manged  Frequench:2.412  GHz  AccessPoint:  00:1A:04:FD:75:01
                   Bit Rate=54 Mb/s    Tx-Power=20 dBm
                   Retry long limit:7    RTS thr:off  Fragement thr:off
                   Power Management:off
                   Link Quality=69/70   Signal level=-41 dB,
                   Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx  invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
                   Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0  Missed beacon:0

tc@box:~$  route

Kernel IP routing table
Desination     Gateway           Genmask              flags   Metric  Ref    Use   iface
127.0.0.1       *                       255.255.255.255 UH       0        0       0       lo
192.168.1.0   *                       255.255.255.0     U         0        0       0       eth0
192.168.1.0   *                       255.255.255.0     U         0        0       0       wlan0
default           192.168.1.254   0.0.0.0                UG       0        0       0       wlan0
default           192.168.1.254   0.0.0.0                UG       0        0       0       eth0

tc@box:~$ iwconfig

lo                no wireless extensions.
dummy0     no wireless extensions.     
eth0           no wireless extensions.     

wlan0         IEEE802.11bg  ESSID:"2WIRE72"
                   Mode:Manged  Frequench:2.412  GHz  AccessPoint:  00:1A:04:FD:75:01
                   Bit Rate=54 Mb/s    Tx-Power=20 dBm
                   Retry long limit:7    RTS thr:off  Fragement thr:off
                   Power Management:off
                   Link Quality=67/70   Signal level=-43 dB,
                   Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx  invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
                   Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0  Missed beacon:0


After I To do the ping to the Asus with a another computer that is wifi connected.
I get no send back response.

Thanks for your help,
Tony

[maro]

As it was my hunch when I wrote reply #3 your issue seems to be that both interfaces ('eth0' and 'wlan0') are connected to the same gateway. This can be seen from the 'route' output, and therefore it is not clear which interface IP packets will use.

I'd suggest for now to disable 'eth0' (e.g. via sudo ifconfig eth0 down). But do that only after you've downloaded all extensions you require for your testing, and then enable the WiFi one. If that works there might be a way to do all this via 'wicd' (i.e. either disable 'eth0' or change the priority), but I'm not using it myself as it is way to "bloated" for my taste.


EDIT: I had a quick look at some other "bloated" distributions that are using 'NetworkManager' to take care of this job. It seems to be in some cases impossible to have both interfaces active at the same time, at the very least there is only ever one default route configured (either using 'eth0' or 'wlan0' but never both).

Knoppix for example disabled the 'wlan0' as soon as 'eth0' had a cable plugged into, and Fedora and Ubuntu seem to change the default route over to 'eth0' whenever possible but are keeping 'wlan0' still active.

Therefore as alternative to disabling 'eth0' entirely you could try just to remove the default route via 'eth0' (e.g. via sudo route del default dev eth0).

[pugliese]

Excellent......indeed "sudo ifconfig eth0 down " solved the problem.

I was not able to solve the problem by alternatively disabling eth0 with "sudo route del default dev eth0"

As my ultimate goal is to replace my 900a os with an in memory TC custom distribution that I can use while on the road,  would you suggest I use another approach other then the wicd package.

Thanks again for your responsive and effective help,
Tony Pugliese

[hiro]

So is this udhcpc's fault?
I managed to work around this in my setup, but would like to know the "right way"™

[pugliese]

I see what you mean
 

[roberts]

Does using  boot code nodhcp instead of "sudo ifconfig eth0 down" help?
nodhcp is typically required when using wifi so that when ethernet cable is not plugged in you don't have a hanging dhcp request waiting to timeout.

[pugliese]

The problem is that   I only have a cd and usb stick with the 10mb core apps.

So I believe I will need to build a distribution that includes loading a wireless network manager since nodhcp will stop setting up eth0 and I have no ability to activate wireless.

So I think I need to do more work before I can try nodhcp?

[hiro]

When I used wicd some time ago I didn't set the nodhcp boot code and wicd seemed to do all this housekeeping stuff all right.

wicd *is* a wireless network manager.

[pugliese]

hiro,
( your response #7)
How did you work around the problem in your setup

[hiro]

I use some custom scripts for all my networking stuff (roam.tcz) which amongst other things kill the old udhcpc instances when I switch to wireless.
But as I said before, wicd seemed to do exactly the same thing when I tried it the last time, maybe there's a bug only visible in your specific setup...

[pugliese]

Thanks!