Hi,
I’m trying to get wireless networking working on a recently installed OpenSUSE and running against my linksys WRT54G wireless router. I’m not having any luck. Here is the information asked for in the sticky above with some irrelevant information elided and a few various questions / comments:
myid@linux-ggin:~> /sbin/lspci
02:02.0 Network controller: Cisco Aironet Wireless Communications Cisco Aironet Wireless 802.11b
myid@linux-ggin:~> /sbin/lspci -n
02:02.0 0280: 14b9:a504
myid@linux-ggin:~> dmesg | grep airo | more
18.522984] airo(): Probing for PCI adapters
19.194302] airo 0000:02:02.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKC] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
19.194330] airo(): Found an MPI350 card
20.142332] airo(eth0): Firmware version 5.20.17
20.142336] airo(eth0): WPA unsupported with firmware versions older than 5.30.17.
20.142340] airo(eth0): MAC enabled 00:02:8a:dc:42:35
20.142385] airo(): Finished probing for PCI adapters
290.723492] airo(eth0): association failed (reason: 12)
290.868587] airo(eth0): association failed (reason: 12)
291.081580] airo(eth0): association failed (reason: 12)
Okay, a couple of comments about the above. (1) the last three lines are actually only the first of 30 or 40 identical lines. I just truncated the output for space. (2) one of my questions was why WPA wasn’t an option when I was trying to configure the wireless connections. The fifth line of the output explains that. Still, I couldn’t get it to work even with security disabled on the router so I am going to continue with this post and put trying to figure out how to do a firmware update on my todo list. I’d also be willing to give WEP a shot. Frankly I don’t know the difference between the two, I only chose WPA because there was less to configure on the router 
myid@linux-ggin:~> /usr/sbin/iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
irda0 no wireless extensions.
eth1 no wireless extensions.
eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"f2\x0E\xB71X\xA3Z%]\x05\x17X\xE9^\xD4\xAD\xB2\xCD\xC7\x9B\xB4T\x11\x0E\x82tA!=\xDC\x87"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Invalid
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=0/65535
Retry limit:16 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=-24 dBm Noise level=-105 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:29917 Rx invalid crypt:1 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:167956 Missed beacon:0
wifi0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"f2\x0E\xB71X\xA3Z%]\x05\x17X\xE9^\xD4\xAD\xB2\xCD\xC7\x9B\xB4T\x11\x0E\x82tA!=\xDC\x87"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Invalid
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=0/65535
Retry limit:16 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=-24 dBm Noise level=-105 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:29917 Rx invalid crypt:1 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:167956 Missed beacon:0
Can anyone tell me why the ESSID looks the way it does? Is that just a reasonable value encoded?
myid@linux-ggin:~> sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.
irda0 Interface doesn't support scanning.
eth1 Interface doesn't support scanning.
eth0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:17:B7:2E:35:AA
ESSID:"myssidl"
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality=100/100 Signal level=-40 dBm Noise level:-105 dBm
Encryption key:off
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
wifi0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:17:B7:2E:35:AA
ESSID:"myssid"
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality=100/100 Signal level=-33 dBm Noise level:-105 dBm
Encryption key:off
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Why do I see the same information for both eht0 and wifi0? Aren’t those both my wireless card? Should I be seeing both of those interfaces?
At this point let me ask a completely naive question. As a linux novice I’m having trouble figuring out how to even indicate that I want to connect to a particular wireless network. For some inexplicable (to me) reason the output of scan above only indicated my own network but on previous attemps it listed those of my neighbors as well. How do I, either through the command line or some gui go about trying to connnect to a given network or reconnect after I’ve made some change through the network configuration utility?
I’d really like to try to get this working either with WEP or temporarily unsecured but I have no idea how to proceed. Thanks in advance for any help that anyone can offer.
-ts1971
