newbie needing help with wireless

English Network/Internet
1

hi, i am just starting to learn about linux, and come from a windows back ground.
my problem is, i have installed OPENsuse 11.1 on my desktop and it all seems to work well, however i cannot connect to my home wireless network. i have looked thru the forums to try and figure out what is wrong but nothing seems to work. i am using my laptop to access the internet so cannot copy and paste.
ok what i have done so far.
i have checked that my wireless is working ok, which it seems to be, it can in fact find the network. but when i try to connect nothing happens. i made a test network with no encrytion just to see if it would work but unfortunately didnt.
i am willing to type any output.
please any help would be great

/sbin/lspci
00:0b.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

/sbin/lspci -n
00:0b.0 0280: 168c:0023 (rev 01)

2

Check the wireless section
Hardware - openSUSE

Help:
Getting Your Wireless to Work - openSUSE Forums

Looks like it will be Madwifi or ndiswrapper

3

ok so i just find the windows driver for it and use Ndiswrapper?

4

I’m no expert here, but probably ndiswrapper will do, must be the XP driver

more info
Madwifi or Ndiswrapper Wireless Network Drivers - Suse/openSUSE 10, 11 - LAN & Internet access

5

No, ndiswrapper is the last and certainly also the worst option.

Either ath9k (if necessary from compat-wireless) or ath_pci (from a recent madwifi-snaptshot).

6

@Akoellh
Thanks. I submit to your expertise here.

7

Hi ; welcome to the OpenSuse forums;

Axel is pointing you towards madwifi;

I am going to take a punt and suggest you look towards this OpenSuse link:

Atheros madwifi - openSUSE

I understand you are using 11.1 Suse; so if you click on the link to madwifi; that loads into your system a series of choices for you;

before you PICK the choice, you need to identify the right kernel that is loaded in your system;

I understand to do that you open a terminal: do you know how: if not ask: and type

uname -r

the help page we have suggested for you says you may get an answer like:

2.6.16.21-0.13-<kernel version# . or whatever …

so jot down what the answer is;

then you follow the instructions on the help page:
open up YaST; enter your root password;

then you are looking for a package, that matches your kernel identity

Select Software Management in the YaST Control Center

Search for madwifi, and you should see a list of packages appear.

It is a large list. (xen, PAE, debug, etc. pick the default)

Install (or update, if necessary) …

madwifi and
madwifi-kmp-<your kernel Version Number>.

then

Click on Accept and wait for the packages to be downloaded and installed

the help page then says “Finally, open up a terminal window, and just run:”

modprobe ath_pci
(Loads the module) and

modprobe -l | grep ath
(Lets you see the module:)

the card should have been detected.

Click on the NetworkManager icon in the system tray and configure your wireless network or Kinternet icon for Suse 11

linux is for adults; we are all trying to help; hope this works

8

Not directly, it is one of at least three options.

A) The card should normally work out of the box with 11.1 and the in-kernel version of ath9k, so first one should check that the setup of network interfaces is not fscked up

B) If A) is done correctly and it is really a driver problem, a newer version of ath9k from compat-wireless is the easiest way, because there is nothing more to do then

C) If A) and B) are done correctly and it still fails, madwifi might be an alternative, there you have to do some extra work, readjust udev-rules (70-persistent-net-rules) and blacklist ath9k.

So more info (as also suggested in Post #2 with the second link) is needed.

P.S.

The madwifi-version you would get from the madwifi-repo would not work (too old) and does also not contain KMP-rpms for kernel = 2.6.27.21.

9

thanks for all this Axel; we appreciate your clarity and knowledge greatly

10

thanks for all the advise guys. i will try some of those options and get back to you.
I know how to open a console and some very basic stuff but thats about it i am afraid.

11

If you get stuck, post the output of

/usr/sbin/hwinfo --wlan

That will tell us more info about hardware and what driver is being used. (It may just be you need to configure your wireless network via yast).

12

Hi Axel; sometimes we all like to play these

“guess what I am thinking …” games

when you said

So more info (as also suggested in Post #2 with the second link) is needed.

and deano has suggested

post the output of

/usr/sbin/hwinfo --wlan

was that what you were thinking?

13

I don’t want to disappoint you, but not really.

Yes, /usr/sbin/hwinfo --wlan is one of the commmands that might ge useful, however, there are a lot more commands more interesting in the link posted in #2 , especially because the output of lspci already posted contains the information needed for hardware identification.

The best way would be to use the diagnostic script mentioned in the “Getting your wireless work”-thread in comment #3.

14

thanks Axel very much;

I didn’t know what you meant; both you and Larry are obviously extremely knowledgable and forum members must be very grateful to have such expertise so freely available and given; it is very much appreciated;

I now see that what you meant was this:

Benutzeranleitung/Usersguide von/of collectNWData | collectNWData.sh

which is a diagnostic script that someone can download

(KDE desktop):

  1. Download this script to your desktop
  2. Press ALT-F2
  3. Type bash ~/Desktop/collectNWData.sh and follow the instructions (ie copy and paste “bash ~/Desktop/collectNWData.sh” into a terminal)
  4. Check whether NWEliza found some configuration problems and follow the given hints to solve the problem on your own
  5. If no problems were reported by NWEliza then copy and paste the contents of collectNWData.txt in your favorite Linux forum. You can find the result file collectNWData.txt on your desktop.

this would seem very helpful for anyone with problems to follow through

copy and paste the contents of collectNWData.txt in your favorite Linux forum

thanks very much

Hi redoscarn

Sorry: I don’t mean to be hi-jacking your thread; do you want to try the above link and see if it gives information?

15

no thats fine, thanks for your help as well. sorry i am slow with all this. i think i am getting a bit confused, i have tried alot of the advice but still am not getting anywhere.
basically i dont have a clue what i am doing lol.
maybe it would be better if i explained a bit clearer…

i have a home network on two laptops running vista premium, one of those laptops is running wireless internet. what i would like to do is join the network with my desktop that i have just installed OPENsuse 11.1 on. i got the install off a computer mag, so i am not even sure if it is a proper installation.

The home network is wpa2 psk encrypted which i made myself and have the key.

the desktop seems to work fine, with all devices installed and working correctly,(remembering that i might not be aware if it wasn’t) however when i try to connect to the home network thru network manager it says connecting…and then nothing happens. i tried using yast and configuring the wireless card, i thought i did it right but really could not say definitely if i had or not.
I believe that the card is installed right, as i tried to follow some other posts and it all seemed ok.

the other problem i have is until maybe 4 weeks ago i had never even looked at Linux before, though i am studying computers at a collage but we are still at the very basics of Linux, and i am also an old hand at windows so have quite a bit of unlearning to do.

16

ok i went thru “getting your wireless to work” and followed the steps, this is what i got…

“II. What device do you have?”
wireless lan was present in YaST =>Hardware=>hardware info

“If you found this entry in your list, then click on its + and find the “Kernel Driver” line, note and report that value.”
Kernal driver was Ath9K

“III. Do you need to install external firmware?”
I looked thru the system logs and boot log, all i found was a line that said “wlan0 link is not ready” and no other error messages.

So from what i can understand everything appears to be right.

17

Hi redoscar;

Axel suggested in an earlier post that

a newer version of ath9k from compat-wireless is the easiest way, because there is nothing more to do then

those are things that you get from here

Download - Linux Wireless

what about though trying the script that I mentioned in the post two up:download it to your desktop, as the page suggests;

Benutzeranleitung/Usersguide von/of collectNWData | collectNWData.sh

then follow the instructions

(KDE desktop):

  1. Download this script to your desktop
  2. Press ALT-F2
  3. Type bash ~/Desktop/collectNWData.sh and follow the instructions (ie copy and paste “bash ~/Desktop/collectNWData.sh” into a terminal)
  4. Check whether NWEliza found some configuration problems and follow the given hints to solve the problem on your own
  5. If no problems were reported by NWEliza then copy and paste the contents of collectNWData.txt back to the wireless forum. You can find the result file collectNWData.txt on your desktop.
18

yes thanks i m just working thru that ne now. it is giving me a few error’s so i will work them out and get back.
thanks for all the help so far

19

ok i used the collectNWData.sh and it has come back with two errors i am unsure about.

“CND0120E: Network card has no IP address.” i thought it could auto assign an I address, however i did assign one but for some reason still comes back with this error

and

“CND0330E: WLAN credential problems exist on interface wlan0” which i have no idea about.
does this make any sense at all?

20

would it be worthwhile just posting the whole result; as there may be some useful other information for the wireless experts to comment on; I am not one of those