I am having some trouble with my Dell 6400 laptop that has a Broadcom 4312 b/g based wireless card. It has
64-bit SUSE 11.1 with KDE 4.2 installed and dual
boots with WinXP. The wireless works with WinXP,
so I know that my router has the correct MAC address
and the pass key is correct.
I have installed the driver using ndiswrapper as suggested in several places. It connects with an
unsecured network nicely using knetworkmanager.
I went through the “wlist wlan0 scan” and found
my router. It does not broadcast the SSID, uses
MAC filtering, and WPAPSK with TKIP. Everything else
looks fine to me in the output from this and “iwconfig”.
The only unusual thing I found was using “dmesg.”
In the output there is a line that gives supported
encriptions. For TKIP it lists WPA, WPA2, and WPA2PSK.
Does this mean that WPAPSK is not supported for my
configuration in SUSE 11.1?
Thank you for the reply Andy. That is good news.
I would like some help. When I can get
my laptop on-line I will post the appropriate
output files. Hopefully I only made a simple mistake.
Jay
Here is what I get from the requested commands:
From dmesg:
ndiswrapper version 1.53 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no)
ndiswrapper (link_pe_images:575): fixing KI_USER_SHARED_DATA address in the driver
ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5 (Broadcom,03/21/2008, 4.170.77.3) loaded
vendor=8086 device=2942
ndiswrapper 0000:0c:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
ndiswrapper 0000:0c:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
ndiswrapper: using IRQ 17
wlan0: ethernet device 00:22:5f:54:17:bd using NDIS driver: bcmwl5, version: 0x4aa4d03, NDIS version: 0x501, vendor: ‘NDIS Network Adapter’, 14E4:4315.5.conf
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK; AES/CCMP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
pci 0000:00:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
pci 0000:00:02.0: setting latency timer to 64
[drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20060119 on minor 0
[drm:i915_getparam] ERROR Unknown parameter 5
mtrr: type mismatch for e0000000,10000000 old: write-back new: write-combining
set status page addr 0x071fc000
[drm:i915_getparam] ERROR Unknown parameter 5
From iwconfig:
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
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:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
From iwlist wlan0 scan:
Note that there are two networks here, both using channel 6.
The first is mine.
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: REMOVED
ESSID:"\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:96/100 Signal level:-34 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=0
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Cell 02 - Address: REMOVED
ESSID:“Wiggins Family Network”
Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:14/100 Signal level:-87 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=0
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
From ifconfig:
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr REMOVED
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:17 Memory:f69fc000-f6a00000
I used the SSID and passkey in knetworkmanager.
The SSID needs to be entered manually since the network
does not broadcast the SSID. I copy and paste the passkey
from a file and set the security to WPA.
Have I done something wrong? If so, what did I miss?
Thank you,
Jay
Hmmm, if you had read the stickies re:hidden essid you would have found this
contribution by prhunt
Scenario: You need to use WPA security for your wireless connection, and the access point has a hidden SSID.
Problem: Your wlan won’t associate with the access point even though your passphrase and all other config details are correct.
Solution: As root, edit the wlan device configuration file and add the following two entries:
WIRELESS_HIDDEN_SSID=‘yes’
WIRELESS_AP_SCANMODE=‘2’
This configuration is located in /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan0
(or a similar file - it should be fairly obvious).
Sources: wpa_supplicant docs.
/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg.template
Andy
Now I do feel foolish. 
Thank you again. I will
try that.
Jay