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Going wireless on linux... with WPA and Static IP? Is it possible? - Page 2

post #21 of 56
9/18/07 at 10:22pm
Heh time to take a step back and explain what half the things you did are...

ifconfig
ifup
ifdown

These commands are for setting up and seeing the status of your network InterFaces. ifup and ifdown will take an interface up or down respectively, ifconfig will do a whole crudload of things, but by itself will give you information on all your currently active interfaces.

lsmod

This command is to see all currently loaded modules(kinda like drivers for windows but not exactly).

iwconfig

Like ifconfig above but for wireless interfaces.

So now that that is out of the way....

From the output of lsmod, I don't see a ndiswrapper module, which needs to be loaded. I don't remember the exact syntax to get it to load the driver for your wireless card, but the command modprobe will load and unload drivers, and likely there is a command for that in one of those guides you can search for and find. That should start your wireless interface, again, and from there you can use the appropriate if commands to get it up or get info on it.

Seablade
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post #22 of 56
9/18/07 at 11:31pm
no, don't give up. Coming from Windows I can understand what you're thinking, but with linux there are very few things you can't fix. It's not [like] windows, and that's a good thing.

I don't have ANY experience with Ndiswrapper, but abf does, and I'm sure that we can get you working if you stick with this.

If you're tired of trying to get this working and you're comfortable cracking the laptop open, and don't mind spending a couple of dollars you could get an intel wireless card they work great with no setup. But I'd suggest keeping this up for a bit. Also, I'd suggest plugging an ethernet cable in so you can get internet while you're working on it.
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post #23 of 56
9/19/07 at 12:12am
Thread Starter 
Hey guys!! Thanks so much for all the help!!

Success is very VERY close! Here is what I've done:

1) I wiped the hard drive
2) Reinstalled a clean ubuntu
3) Set up a wired connection and got online just fine with my static IP
4) Followed the exact instructions from this guide
5) Everything is beautiful now and the WiFi light is illuminating
6) My secured wireless network is being detected as a possible "Connect to" network.
7) Can't use it because Network-Manager only supports DHCP with WPA (I need static)
8) Replaced Network-Manager with WICD
9) Set up all my settings through GUI with WICD
10) It shows that I am connected to my secured network and a great connection signal.

Now at this point everything appears to be perfectly fine. But...

If I type a website (lets say google.com) it just loads and loads and loads but nothing ever appears. No error messages either, just loading for an infinite amount of time.

When I log into my router from my main PC and check the currently connected devices, it doesn't list the linux notebook there.

Although the WICD is telling me it is connected and even shows me a signal strength which hovers in the 77%-99% range.

Very spooky if you ask me.

Any ideas? because I'm stumped...
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post #24 of 56
9/19/07 at 12:18am
cant help you on your latest issue but i can explain why when you came out of standby (first of all i am impressed standby works for you out of the box) you didn't have wireless.

ndiswrapper is one of those modules that does no tolerate suspend. In other words when you suspend (to ram or to disk) your system the module simply turns off. When you come out of suspend the system reloads all the modules that well...have the capacity to unsuspend but ndiswrapper is not one of them so you have to manually modprobe ndiswrapper to get it back. of course you can automate the process by modding your suspend script to load up certain modules (like ndiswrapper) on top of the usual unsuspend action.
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post #25 of 56
9/19/07 at 12:31am
so what do you get from ifconfig, iwconfig, and iwlist scanning now?
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post #26 of 56
9/19/07 at 1:12am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by drlouis View Post
so what do you get from ifconfig, iwconfig, and iwlist scanning now?
Everything seems pretty normal (not that I would know anyways) Check it out: sudo ifconfig
Code:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:B9:83:70:98  
          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:21 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1B:FC:C1:25:E5  
          inet addr:24.24.22.29  Bcast:24.24.22.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::21b:fcff:fec1:25e5/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2132 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1748 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:240916 (235.2 KiB)  TX bytes:236407 (230.8 KiB)
          Interrupt:19 Memory:d0200000-d0204000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:75 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:75 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:6743 (6.5 KiB)  TX bytes:6743 (6.5 KiB)
sudo iwconfig
Code:
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"KPOUT"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:0C:41:F2:8B:C9   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:64/100  Signal level:-55 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
sudo iwlist scanning
Code:
lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1      Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:0C:41:F2:8B:C9
                    ESSID:"KPOUT"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality:73/100  Signal level:-49 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=100
                    Extra:atim=0
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : CCMP 
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP 
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK  
          Cell 02 - Address: 00:12:0E:63:7C:26
                    ESSID:"BigHome"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality:15/100  Signal level:-86 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 22 Mb/s
                              6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
                              36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=200
                    Extra:atim=0
It's even picking up signals from my neighbors' networks. Well, I've been back to my research and I read this thread at the WICD forum. Particularly this post and this post What do you guys think? Should I give it a try? The guy he is helping is not having the same problem as me... but I am using ndiswrapper on Feisty which (according to him) doesn't support WPA. Before I do anything I will try to connect without any security enabled and see how it goes.
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post #27 of 56
9/19/07 at 1:18am
not finding any info that says ndiswrapper does not support wpa... found this thread on ubuntuforums though which seems applicable

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-31418.html
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post #28 of 56
9/19/07 at 1:31am
well, it looks like you have wireless at least. But you're using software I have no experience with. I don't even know if you still need wpa supplicant with that other software you're using. so I'm going to defer to abf and the others.
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post #29 of 56
9/19/07 at 1:46am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by abf View Post
ndiswrapper is one of those modules that does no tolerate suspend. In other words when you suspend (to ram or to disk) your system the module simply turns off. When you come out of suspend the system reloads all the modules that well...have the capacity to unsuspend but ndiswrapper is not one of them so you have to manually modprobe ndiswrapper to get it back. of course you can automate the process by modding your suspend script to load up certain modules (like ndiswrapper) on top of the usual unsuspend action.
btw, thanks for that info! That will definitely save me a future headache once I get everything working right
Quote:
Originally Posted by drlouis View Post
I don't even know if you still need wpa supplicant with that other software you're using.
In the last screenshot on this page you can see how my preferences look like. There is an option there WPA Supplicant Driver. I'm not sure if this is what you meant though. I also noticed that from that dropdown list I have the ability to select ndiswrapper amongst several other things. I've tried them all but the same problem happens with each one. Wext was the default so I set it back to that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by abf View Post
not finding any info that says ndiswrapper does not support wpa... found this thread on ubuntuforums though which seems applicable http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-31418.html
Yep I just found that link also! I didn't know if it applies to my situation so I didn't try it. But if you say it worth a shot then that's exactly what I'm going to do right now.
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post #30 of 56
9/19/07 at 1:53am
do you get a log file that might give a clue as to what's failing if you check the 'enable debug mode'?
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post #31 of 56
9/19/07 at 2:14am
Thread Starter 
Well, strangely that debug mode option isn't on my version of the preferences. Here is a screenshot of what it looks like for me: A lot of things are missing. Perhaps the screenshot on the Wicd site is from an older version? I don't know... Also, I've read some of the comments that people wrote about the guide I used and Ben mentions:
Quote:
Hi, Just thought I'd mention that I needed to install ndiswrapper 1.44 in order to get this guide to work with feisty (used it successfully as-is with dapper). Also, if you're trying to get WPA working, this part of the ubuntuguide works well: http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:F...wrapper_driver Thanks for all the info on this site. Ben
Could that be the answer? or should I try what abf posted first? I just want to make sure I don't screw something up and have to start from a clean install all over again I should add that I tried disabling the security and also with WEP instead of WPA and the SAME problem happened (I appear to be connected but I'm really not)
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post #32 of 56
9/19/07 at 10:30am
Hmm couple questions real quick before you get to far...

Is the IP address correct? That is what you are assigning for an IP address? It isn't wrong persay, but most people would rather stick to the 192.168.*.* or 10.*.*.* range for internal networks in general.

Also what do you get for the output of...

sudo route

And if you type ping <router address> what do you get? You will need to hit CTRL+C to stop it.

Seablade
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post #33 of 56
9/19/07 at 10:33am
Hmm I think I see another problem here....

Code:
eth1      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"KPOUT"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:0C:41:F2:8B:C9   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:64/100  Signal level:-55 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Code:
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:0C:41:F2:8B:C9
                    ESSID:"KPOUT"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality:73/100  Signal level:-49 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=100
                    Extra:atim=0
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : CCMP 
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP 
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK

First things first, turn off encryption on your network just to test and see if it is working. If it works without encryption then the problem is in your encryption. If it doesn't work without encryption the problem is in your network setup and routing(Which I start to address in my previous post).

In other words, find out what exactly isn't working before you try to fix it

Seablade
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post #34 of 56
9/19/07 at 12:09pm
I would definitely say to set your machine to dhcp and turn off encryption in the router. Once that works, and you can successfully connect, THEN start adding complications (static ip and encryption).

(....in fact, I'm pretty sure I suggested that right off the bat)
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post #35 of 56
9/19/07 at 1:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post
Hmm couple questions real quick before you get to far... Is the IP address correct? That is what you are assigning for an IP address? It isn't wrong persay, but most people would rather stick to the 192.168.*.* or 10.*.*.* range for internal networks in general. Also what do you get for the output of... sudo route And if you type ping <router address> what do you get? You will need to hit CTRL+C to stop it. Seablade
Hi Seablade. I'm 100% sure the IP is correct. That is the one I set up in my router and that's how I use it in all the PC's in my house. I tried that ping command, but I am getting Destination Unreachable. I also uninstalled WICD and replaced it with something called WiFi-Radar. No luck with that one either sudo route
Code:
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
24.24.22.0      *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth1
link-local      *               255.255.0.0     U     1000   0        0 eth1
default         24.24.22.1      0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth1
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post
First things first, turn off encryption on your network just to test and see if it is working. If it works without encryption then the problem is in your encryption. If it doesn't work without encryption the problem is in your network setup and routing(Which I start to address in my previous post). In other words, find out what exactly isn't working before you try to fix it Seablade
Yep I've tried it already. I tried without any encryption and the same problem happened where it appears that I am connected but no pages load. Also, the router's connected devices list doesn't have me in the list so it obviously isn't connected. I also tried it with WEP. Same thing...
Quote:
Originally Posted by drlouis View Post
I would definitely say to set your machine to dhcp and turn off encryption in the router. Once that works, and you can successfully connect, THEN start adding complications (static ip and encryption). (....in fact, I'm pretty sure I suggested that right off the bat)
Now the only thing I haven't tried yet was the DHCP route. I think I just might have to give that a shot. And if THAT doesn't work then I'm just going to stick this laptop in a permanent spot and connect it the "old fashion" way. I'm not ready to give up on Linux yet. Maybe I can run a Virtual Windows XP on linux and use that for my wireless surfing freedom. Or if anything I'll set up a dual boot.
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post #36 of 56
9/19/07 at 3:34pm
when you turn off encryption, are you doing it in the router? (sorry if this seems obvious, I've learned not to take things that seem obvious for granted) Also, I'm curious if you have some settings in your router that might be interfering. Like if you've assigned an ip in your linux setup that is outside the IP range in the router. For example I have a Linksys WRT54GS, and there's a place to assign the allowable ip range.

another thing that occurs to me (I'm no expert, just played with this a fair bit) that in my router I have DHCP server enabled, and then on the boxes that I need to have a static IP, I just set up in the /interfaces file as I posted in my initial post. So if you have DHCP server turned off, and you dont have the router set up correctly that could cause issues.

You'll definitely want to leave all security off, and the ssid on until you can connect. You really shouldn't need any of those fancy gui things to get online. Once you have it working it should be easy enough to set one of those up. But until you have a known working setup I'm a big fan of keeping it as simple as possible (may be part of why I'm partial to Slackware).
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post #37 of 56
9/19/07 at 4:12pm
Wifi radar is simply a gui for wireless-tools, aka iwconfig, wlist....as well as ifconfig, ifup and ifdown.... no special or unique features in any way. you might as well just use command line. or go back to nm-applet.
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post #38 of 56
9/19/07 at 4:35pm
Quote:
I tried that ping command, but I am getting Destination Unreachable.
If you are pinging 24.24.22.1 when encryption is turned off on your network and on your wireless card, and getting destination unreachable, there is a problem somewhere in your network setup. Do you have MAC address filtering set up in your router? If you do, is the MAC address for this wireless card in the list? Seablade
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post #39 of 56
9/19/07 at 5:17pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by drlouis View Post
when you turn off encryption, are you doing it in the router? (sorry if this seems obvious, I've learned not to take things that seem obvious for granted)
LOL if that were the case, I may as well jump of a bridge instead of trying to conquer linux

Anyways, I had some success (even with the static IP. See below)

Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade View Post
Do you have MAC address filtering set up in your router? If you do, is the MAC address for this wireless card in the list?
I do have MAC address filtering set up. And I'm 100% sure the MAC address for this wireless card is on the list. But just so I could be 100% sure it wasn't interfering in any way I had disabled MAC filtering ever since my first post in this thread.

---

A small taste of SUCCESS!

I reinstalled ubuntu from scratch and this time I followed this guide.

After that, I installed WICD to make my life easier.

Then I disabled encryption in my router, and set up WICD with all my settings.

And this time... I was able to get online WIRELESS

So then I enabled WPA, set up WICD to use WPA, but no luck... I get the same problem (an infinite loading page that never loads). Though WICD states that the connection is fine.

I tried with WEP also. Same problem.

btw, this is all with my Static IP and everything. When I connected wirelessly without encryption, it was also with my static IP set up. So I think we can eliminate that as a problem now.

Why is it so hard to secure a wireless connection in linux? Sheeeesh...

I'm open to more suggestions. In the meantime, I'm going to get back to my research and see what I can find.
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post #40 of 56
9/19/07 at 5:27pm
typically WEP is a very simple process under linux. ... all that it requires is that you
Code:
#: sudo ifconfig ath0 essid myessid key myhexkeycodehere
wpa requires use of wpasupplicant and even then its just a few minutes worth of copying/pasting codes into config files to get that going. of course because you are running ndiswrapper (that is still the case right?) that might change some details of it all.
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