Problem getting Intel 3945ABG Express card to connect to WPA

English Network/Internet
1

I’ve just installed 11.1 on my Thinkpad X60s and am having trouble getting my wireless to connect to my router with WPA2/PSK AES encryption. As far as I know the wireless card has been correctly identified and driver installed so I’m guessing it’s a configuration problem. I’m using Nerwork Manager Applet 0.7.0 in Gnome.

Below are the card details:
Demsg

iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for Linux, 1.2.26ks

iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation
vendor=8086 device=27d2
iwl3945 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
iwl3945 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
iwl3945: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 3945ABG
iwl3945: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 23 802.11a channels

iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

irda0     no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11abg  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 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

pan0      no wireless extensions.

iwlist scan

lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

irda0     Interface doesn't support scanning.

wmaster0  Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:14:85:CE:98:1E
                    ESSID:"\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00"
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:9
                    Frequency:2.452 GHz (Channel 9)
                    Quality=84/100  Signal level:-50 dBm  Noise level=-127 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
                        Group Cipher : CCMP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
                    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:tsf=00000003d2219181
                    Extra: Last beacon: 1324ms ago

pan0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

Now in the Network Manager enter the SSID (it’s a hidden network), mode is infrastructure and the rest is left as default. Under wireless security I select WPA & WPA2 Personal security and enter my passphrase.

However the wireless just fails to connect to my router. I haven’t been able to see if it will connect if I remove the encryption on the router as it in use so I’ll have to wait till the weekend to try.

I did try changing the channel on the router but that made no difference.

Any help appreciated.

BTW is there an application that will scan for wireless networks and offer to attempt to connect to them?

2

I have from lspci -v

Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation ThinkPad R60e/X60s

No issue for me, but yours has the /BG

lspci -k gives

Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection (rev 02)
Kernel driver in use: iwl3945
Kernel modules: iwl3945

3

If I run the lspci -v & -k then I get exactly what you have.

OK, I’ve deleted the wireless network and now wen I click on the network manager icon in the task bar I can see the wireless network. Clicking on it makes it ask me to set the authentication but the options it’s giving me are only for WEP, LEAP and dynamic WEP and not WPA / WPA2 which is what I need.

This is really puzzling me.

4

suse tpx60s wrote:
> If I run the lspci -v & -k then I get exactly what you have.
>
> OK, I’ve deleted the wireless network and now wen I click on the
> network manager icon in the task bar I can see the wireless network.
> Clicking on it makes it ask me to set the authentication but the options
> it’s giving me are only for WEP, LEAP and dynamic WEP and not WPA / WPA2
> which is what I need.
>
> This is really puzzling me.

Sometimes you need to delete the old connection entry and then add it back as a
“new” one. That happened to me earlier today. Once you do that, it will read the
encryption from the scan data.

5

Hey presto that worked!!! I can see I’m going to have some fun with some of the quirks I’m seeing so far. Well that’s another thing ticked off the list. Now I can get down to the serious stuff of tweaking power management, docked and undocked profiles, etc, etc…