Wireless not working in 11.1 RC1

I’m using a compaq F700 laptop but can’t get wireless (atheros AR242 card) internet to work. I know I’m close though, since my wireless card is detecting several wireless networks in the area, but I can’t get internet connectivity. Internet works fine through ethernet.

I’m using 64-bit KDE4 with network manager enabled. If I use ifup, it doesn’t even try to find any networks. When I then go to reconfigure with network manager, YAST gives an “Error - no network running”. But checking from the command line, it is running. Everything seems fine, but can’t connect with firefox. Anyone know a workaround?

Have you gone into Yast > Network Devices > Network Settings and configured the card?

Every tab & every page has to be looked at & those that apply filled out. Some, you need to go back and visit as a new tab may appear. BTW the extensions need to match with the router or it won’t work (to include the key).

You can check all that with “iwconfig” in a terminal as root after you have configured the card in Yast.
“man iwconfig”

Good luck:)

Yes, I’ve configured the settings in Yast > Network Devices > Network Settings to what I think is correct, mostly defaults.

I tried installing madwifi, and that may have helped, but I still can’t connect.

When I run iwconfig, I get the following:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:“PhocusArray”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:02:6F:45:25:CC
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=20/100 Signal level:-89 dBm Noise level=-102 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

So there seems to be some type of connection. When I try to configure the card with ifup, I get nothing. When going back and setting the card to network manager, I get the following error:

“The application Plasma Workspace(plasma) crashed and caused the signal 11 (SIGSEGV)”

So it may be a problem with plasma.

There is a taskbar item that controls wireless. It seems that it can find all the local wireless networks. However, this application says that interface wlan0 is disconnected and it won’t let me try to connect to any of the wireless networks.

If I can’t get this to work, I may try reinstalling with KDE3 as the desktop.

Also, if I type: ifup wlan0

It says,

“No configuration found for wlan0”

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:“PhocusArray”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:02:6F:45:25:CC
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality=20/100 Signal level:-89 dBm Noise level=-102 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Well, that tells me the thing is up.
You need to go through the config one tab/page/line at a time and make sure all the extensions are correct & match the router.
Encryption keyoff < do you use a key? Does it need to be “Restricted”?
do you have the routes set?
is that the right frequency for the unit?
do you have the correct gateway?
etc., etc.

“man iwconfig”
and set the rate (better than Bit Rate=1 Mb/s) for example
“iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M”
Type iwconfig again & see if it’s better
and so on.

NetworkManager support in KDE4/11.1 is still a work in progress, and there are issues with wifi connectivity.

You may want to configure Yast to not use NetworkManager and rely on ifup, or try installing networkmanager-kde (kde3 version) as a temporary workaround.

Just a thought…

Cheers,
KV

I am having a possibly related problem. The default route is not being set by networkmanager. This is a new problem introduced in 11.1 RC1. The problem did not exist in Beta3, Beta4, or Beta5.

Anyone have anything similar happening?

Right now, networkmanager is a cluster fook. YaST won’t even configure any network if networkmanager is selected. Could be something as simple as restarting the network after you have configured your network device using ifup with YaST2.

Use the lsmod command to make sure your devices’ modules are loading.

Restart the network with the ‘rcnetwork restart’ command (as root) and post the output here.

You need to blacklist the atheros support in the kernel and install madwifi drivers. I have the same issue with my acer aspire one.

I think, we should make a new thread for Atheros AR242x (AR5007) only, where we can fight with it to make it working on oS… On that forum is loadz of solutions - unfortunately, usually they don’t work. Sorry for off-topic.

Am I the only one which looks at bugzilla.
This is a known bug upgrade to the latest version of HAL in this repository to fix it.
Index of /repositories/home:/dkukawka

Thanks for all the help, but I think I’ll wait until the next RC or final version and then try again.

What I’ve found is that NetworkManager in 11.1RC1 is not setting the default route and DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf.

I worked around this by using yast2 network, setting the IFUP static method, bringing up the interface, then at a shell as root, seeing what the values for:

route

shows. I then ran:

route add default gw #.#.#.#

changing the #'s to match your network gateway that the static method applies.

I then updated my /etc/resolv.conf to have

nameserver #.#.#.#

lines representing what the static method uses.

A hack, but it allows NetworkManager to run.

OK, some more detective work on 11.1RC1…

  1. set DEBUG=“yes” in /etc/sysconfig/network/config

  2. retry your network config via NetworkManager…

  3. examine the messages being reported in /var/log/messages

  4. I was getting messages of the following variety:

Dec 23 18:39:11 macduff dhclient: wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
Dec 23 18:39:11 macduff dhclient: /var/run/nm-dhclient-wlan0.conf line 28: no option named network-number in space dhcp
Dec 23 18:39:11 macduff dhclient: request subnet-mask, network-number,
Dec 23 18:39:11 macduff dhclient: ^
Dec 23 18:39:11 macduff dhclient: /var/run/nm-dhclient-wlan0.conf line 33: ntp-servers: expected option name.
Dec 23 18:39:11 macduff dhclient: netbios-node-type, netbios-scope, ntp-servers;
Dec 23 18:39:11 macduff dhclient:

  1. correct/edit your /etc/dhclient.conf as noted in these errors

  2. I was also not getting my /etc/resolv.conf updated by NetworkManager when it setup my resolution…as denoted by:

Dec 23 18:39:26 macduff dns-resolver: ATTENTION: You have modified /etc/resolv.conf. Leaving it untouched…
Dec 23 18:39:26 macduff dns-resolver: You can find my version in /etc/resolv.conf.netconfig
D

  1. To fix this, ensure that your /etc/resolv.conf ends with:

only, the netconfig settings are same with settings in this

file and in case of a “netconfig update -f” call.

Please remove (at least) this line when you modify the file!

  1. Merry Christmas!!!