Intel 4965 - Can 'see' the router but connection times out

[mal1]

Greetings from Australia!
I have been a very happy OpenSuse (Gnome) user since the release of v11.
When a friend saw OpenSuse he was impressed enough to try it on his laptop.
Unfortunately we couldn't get a wireless connection.
(We can see our intended connection, but connection fails).
Laptop uses the Intel 4965 chip.

A look through the 'messages' file shows the connection attempt times out.
I should point out that we are using the same wireless router used by my laptop.
We understand this is not an OpenSuse problem, as a little reseach tends to indicate there
could be fault in the iwlwifi driver.

Subsequently we have tried several more distro's, all with the same result.
With the release of OpenSuse 11.1 RC1 we thought the inclusion of the 2.6.27 kernel may do the trick.
Alas no.
We then tried the latest Ubuntu offering, which also uses the 2.6.27 kernel, with the same result.
Interestingly, Mandriva 2009.0 also uses the 2.6.27 kernel, and hey presto, it works !

Is there a chance that Mandriva have discovered the secret?
Is there any way this can be also applied to OpenSuse 11.1?

Some dumps of various commands from OpenSuse 11.1RC1(Gnome) in live mode.....

Many thanks for any assistance.

Edit #1 Sorry, just relalised this should have been posted under wireless....
Edit #2 Forgot Laptop info : Dell Latitude D630. Intel chip 2Gb, 1Gb Ram

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cat /var/log/messages | grep wlan
Nov 28 21:42:30 linux kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55
Nov 28 21:42:30 linux kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55
Nov 28 21:42:30 linux kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55
Nov 28 21:42:31 linux kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55
Nov 28 21:42:31 linux kernel: wlan0: authentication with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55 timed out
Nov 28 21:42:55 linux kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55
Nov 28 21:42:55 linux kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55
Nov 28 21:42:55 linux kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55
Nov 28 21:42:56 linux kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55
Nov 28 21:42:56 linux kernel: wlan0: authentication with AP 00:01:38:99:27:55 timed out


dmesg | grep ntel
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU0: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz stepping 0d
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#1.
CPU1: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz stepping 0d
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: Intel 965GM Chipset
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected 7676K stolen memory
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0xe0000000
iTCO_wdt: Intel TCO WatchDog Timer Driver v1.03 (30-Apr-2008)
HDA Intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
HDA Intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64
iwlagn: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, 1.3.27ks
iwlagn: Copyright(c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation
iwlagn: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN REV=0x4

dmesg | grep 4965
iwlagn: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN REV=0x4
firmware: requesting iwlwifi-4965-2.ucode

lspci
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)

lsmod
iwlagn 86580 0
iwlcore 82568 1 iwlagn
rfkill 8660 2 iwlcore
led_class 3896 1 iwlcore
mac80211 199840 2 iwlagn,iwlcore
cfg80211 23356 3 iwlagn,iwlcore,mac80211

Kernel
Linux linux 2.6.27.7-4-default #1 SMP 2008-11-25 00:02:37 +0100 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

hwinfo
20: PCI c00.0: 0282 WLAN controller
[Created at pci.318]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_4229
Unique ID: y9sn.9RJazxQBVB3
Parent ID: qTvu.TkjeLK60Af8
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:0c:00.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:0c:00.0
Hardware Class: network
Model: "Intel PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection"
Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
Device: pci 0x4229 "PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection"
SubVendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
SubDevice: pci 0x1120
Revision: 0x61
Driver: "iwlagn"
Driver Modules: "iwlagn"
Device File: wlan0
Features: WLAN
Memory Range: 0xfe8fe000-0xfe8fffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
IRQ: 219 (no events)
HW Address: 00:1f:3b:01:49:bd
Link detected: yes
WLAN channels: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 149 153 157 161 165
WLAN frequencies: 2.412 2.417 2.422 2.427 2.432 2.437 2.442 2.447 2.452 2.457 2.462 5.18 5.2 5.22 5.24 5.26 5.28 5.3 5.32 5.745 5.765 5.785 5.805 5.825
WLAN encryption modes: WEP40 WEP104 TKIP CCMP
WLAN authentication modes: open sharedkey wpa-psk wpa-eap
Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00004229sv00008086sd00001120bc02sc8 0i00"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: iwlagn is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe iwlagn"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #9 (PCI bridge)

[clayb226]

I and a similar problem, I had to disable network manager to get connected. Try to open a root terminal, and type
ps -A | grep etwork and see if NetworkManager and NetworkManagerD is listed. If it is kill it with the kill command, example kill 4986, where 4986 is the process id number. Then, try to bring it up with ifup x, where x is the wireless device, mine is wlan0.

[ZStefan]

4965 is an excellent chip. It is in my laptop, and never caused problems. I use kNetworkmanager, again without problems. I run openSUSE 11.0 64 bit, and the driver is not iwlagn. There was no need to do something at the installation time.

Maybe reinstall the 11.0?

[mal1]

Thanks for your suggestion, clayb266, I will give that a try.

[clayb226]

Originally Posted by mal1

Thanks for your suggestion, clayb266, I will give that a try.

You are welcome, I hope it works, keep us posted.

[LewsTherinTelemon]

Hi there,

In addition to killing NetworkManager and the deamon, and restarting them you might try to just bypass NetworkManager all together and just use iwconfig to set up the connect.

iwconfig - Wireless Interface configuration utility in Linux | SUSE & openSUSE

The idea is just to see if you can get it working at all, then play with the GUI more. But if you can at least get it working with the command line then you know the kernel module is working, etc.

I tend to think that the Mandriva worked with due to a different kernel module for the wifi, or a different version of NetworkManager, etc. It's not so much the kernel itself, but rather the kernel modules for wifi: #lsmod will list all your currently loaded modules.

Oh, after you get a connection with the access point you will likely need to run dhclient to get a DHCP ip address - other wise you will need to set that manually as well.

Cheers,
Pete

[mal1]

Hi everyone!

Thanks to you all for your suggestions.

clayb266
We stepped through your process and we got V11.1 RC1 working so we
did a fresh install over V11 and I now have a happy friend and we all have new 'convert'.
Thankyou ZStefan for the 're-install' thought.

To LewsTherinTelemon aka Pete,
Your link in addition to this one:-
[url=http://en.opensuse.org/Tracking_down_wireless_problems[/url]
helped to educate us on what is happening under the covers so we rather enjoyed tinkering with V11 to get it working.
Got to the point where we can successfully ping the AP but not the outside world. Must be a conflict but haven't located it as yet.

Thanks again for assisting in our education.

Cheers,
Miles