Starting Over - New Wireless PCMCIA NIC

[bobbear43]

THANK YOU!

Did all that. HAL not running .... just to be sure tell me how to check that. There were about 10 drivers already listed in ndiswrapper -l. I removed them all before inserting new driver.

No errors encountered until all finished and tried to connect. wifi-radar did not connect (disconnect actually disconnects).

Error when trying to connect in wifi-radar: "Error for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) : Set failed on device wlan0 : Invalid argument." Same error on disconnect.

dhcpcd does not connect. just times out after displaying Mac address for card.

vwifi-connect reports "/sbin/dhcpcd: not running"

The security log on my router shows no attempts to login. It does show blocked repeated attempts on its firewall from IP 10.241.160.1 during the same time as these tests. No idea what that is. Reports "blocked by DoS protection."

Other error after doing all this: My USB card no longer can be accessed .... must be present at boot to open but file system never opens it though it appears on desktop after doing this driver install.

For sake of sanity, connected USB Ethernet card I have had for about 10 years to see if this computer can actually get on the Internet. VASM found it, configuted it. YUP! Working from that interface now.

I am still "haunted" in all this by the comment from the madwifi developer when trying that route earlier that my card is not seeing an ap because no ap is associated in iwconfig. Does that have any relevancy?

[exeterdad]

Oh Maaaaaaan!  First thing I see is.....

THANK YOU!

I thought you nailed it.  Hang in there buddy!

[newt]

I also get the "Error for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) : Set failed on device wlan0 : Invalid argument" when using wifi-radar however once I actually get connected to my router those error messages stop being displayed.  I've just come to ignore them - call it "being ignorant" .  At this point, I wouldn't put too much weight on this particular "error".

I believe that your USB card issue is directly related to not having the HAL service running.  You should be able to see if the hal service is running by issuing ps -aux and looking for a service name with 'hald' in it. I asked you to stop the hal service because I had read (ubuntu forum I think) of someone having troubles with their wireless card (same chipset as yours) and it seemed that hal was interfering with functionality.  You should be safe to re-enable this service, reboot, and make sure your usb card can be accessed again.

I do not use dhcp/d on my network so I don't dare make any suggestion in regards to that, but let's assume that this is a point of interest.  I think your understanding of it and how it relates to your network is probably better than mine.  I assign IPs to my local systems.

Your router log is VERY interesting.  You say that repeated blocked attempts from IP 10.x.x.x show from the same time period as your tests.  The IP range 10.x.x.x is a Class A local network address range (I think the ENTIRE range) which would mean that those "DoS attacks" were coming from your local network -- most likely your VL box you're on right now.  I'm NOT suggesting that your system is compromised; I'm suggesting that (POSSIBLY) your system is being assigned an IP address in the Class A range (10.x.x.x) rather than Class C range (192.168.x.x).  If the IP 10.241.160.1 is truely coming from your VL box then I would interpret that as saying your wireless radio is working and can communicate with your router; just need to figure out why it's 10.x.x.x rather than 192.168.2.x

My understanding of having an associated AP is that once you're connected to a wireless network then, and only then, will you have an associated AP.  Since you cannot successfully connect to an AP then you do not have an associated AP.  Again, THIS IS MY UNDERSTANDING/INTERPRETATION of an "associated AP".

From all this I see 2 points of interest (to start with ):
1) IP 10.x.x.x DoS attack on your router: I believe this is your D-Link card making these attempts.
2) Make sure DHCP/d is working correctly on router and on your system

Actually, those two points could very well be related to each other.  If dhcp is not working correctly and is assigning an incorrect IP address in the range 10.x.x.x then it would explain both points.  Since I have little experience with the dhcpd service in linux I don't dare make any recommendations to avoid you "spinning your wheels".

What I would do in your situation would be to test a static IP scenario on your local network; this takes dhcp/d out of the equation.  Simply change your router configuration so that dhcp is turned off and set the IP range of your local nework, save your changes, and reboot the router.  Then assign an appropriate IP address to your VL computer using wifi-radar - give it your desired IP address, netmask, gateway, dns (e.g. ip 192.168.2.101, n/m 255.255.255.0, g/w 192.168.2.1, dns1 192.168.2.1).  Then attempt to connect to the router.

I hope this helps!

[GrannyGeek]

Bobbear,

I'm faced with a similar situation of being absolutely unable to connect to my wireless network with VL 5.8 Standard. The chip is a Realtek 8185. I've gone through every step very carefully many times. Everything looks right. However, I can't get on the network no way, no how. I use WPA and will not change this. I've found that I must use a Windows XP driver with ndiswrapper, as the native Linux driver is very bad and doesn't work, either, plus it seems incapable of doing WPA. iwlist wlan0 scan shows the network perfectly, but in iwconfig there is nothing associated with the access point. I've tried everything, including turning off encryption in the access point, but it won't connect that way, either.

Not all distros have the problem. I've been trying several LiveCDs to see which ones can connect and which ones cannot. Knoppix, no. Ubuntu, wouldn't install at all as a Live CD. Puppy Linux, no--didn't offer WPA and I couldn't find a way to add it. DSL, no--again, no WPA. ZenWalk Live CD, no. Couldn't get a desktop to come up at all. BUT.....
     PCLinuxOS *does* get a WPA wireless connection and quite easily with its system configuration utility. And Mandriva One LiveCD also gets a WPA connection with its Control Center. (Not surprising--I think PCLinuxOS is derived from Mandriva.) Both of these tend to lose the connection and I have to reconnect through the Control Center, so they're not perfect either. The wireless works perfectly in Windows, by the way.

So I think if I want to have Linux on its own partition on this laptop, I'll have to install PCLinuxOS or Mandriva. I simply can't get VL to work. But I may just leave the 16-gig partition empty and use it for beta testing 64-bit VectorLinux. Neither PCLinuxOS nor Mandriva can get sound to come out of the speakers or anywhere else, nor can Vector, nor can any other Linux I've tried on this laptop. Web searches seem to indicate that this is par for the course for the SigmaTel HDA Audio CODEC onboard sound. I can't use the laptop if I have no sound, so that's definitely a deal breaker.

I have VL installed on a VirtualBox virtual machine under Vista on the laptop and it's working perfectly--sound and networking (they're virtualized, so don't have the driver issues). Virtualization is a good solution for this kind of problem as long as you have enough horsepower.

A few minutes later:
I've given up. Even Mandriva loses the connection frequently and the last time it lost it, I couldn't get it up again. This never happens in Windows. The connection strength is excellent, but PCLinuxOS and Mandriva just can't hang onto it. I think the RTL8185 and Linux just don't get along. And with the intractible sound problem, there's no point in spending even more hours on this. I'm writing this from VL 5.8 Standard running in VirtualBox.
--GrannyGeek

[bobbear43]

I tried newtor's suggestions, but still no network. The 10.241.160.1 IP continued to bang at my firewall after everything was shut down, and still continues. That was a red herring. The IP is not shown as registered and falls in the range of reserved IP's.

So I am giving this up until someone tells me there is a way to install "out of the box" without all this extra labor.