Wireless Configuration???

[jasonmgeorge]

I recently installed Redhat 9 on my laptop, which I use both at home and at school. I had wireless working at home and made the mistake letting someone help me connect to the network at school. I'm not sure what the person did, but I can't seem to get wireless running at home again.

I've had the card running at home before, and it works at school, so I'm resonably confident that the drivers are correct.

I've copied a script from the forums to allow me to switch between my school and home connections (it's actually a pair of scripts - one for each)

-------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash

cp -rf /root/ifcfg-eth1.home /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

echo Changing system to home configuration...

service network restart
--------------------------------------------------------

Here is ifcfg-eth1.home:
--------------------------------------------------------
USERCTL=yes
PEERDNS=yes
GATEWAY=
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=eth1
HWADDR=00:06:25:17:53:74
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=
ONBOOT=no
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
NAME=
DOMAIN=
ESSID=LinksysAPT
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Managed
KEY=<my key in hex>
RATE=11Mb/s
--------------------------------------------------------

I can't seem to get a link. I'm using a linksys wireless router with WEP enabled and MAC filtering disabled. Any ideas?

[jasonmgeorge]

After working on fixing it last night, it appears to be a problem with my boot order.

Here is the orignial contents of my /etc/rc.d/rc5.d folder:

K05saslauthd
K20nfs
K24irda
K36lisa
K95firstboot
S05kudzu
S08iptables
S09isdn
S10network
S12syslog
S13protmap
S14nfslock
S17keytable
S20random
S24pcmcia
S25netfs
S26apmd
S28autofs
...


Acording to step IV at http://linux.oldcrank.com/tips/wpc11/, pcmcia should be around S08 so I changed to folder contents to

...
S07iptables
S08pcmcia
S09 isdn
...

Now when I boot the link light on my wireless card stops blinking and stays on (I have a signal), but all my networking configurations are screwed up. Wireless is now eth0 and ethernet is eth1.

I'm not sure what I should to to fix this.

[Icarus]

I always thought the boot order was a little wierded also, but never changed it to work around this problem. It sounds like the PCMCIA card is getting priority over the LAN card. I think putting the pcmcia after the network should put them back where eth0 is the LAN. But you still might have the problem of eth1 not getting an IP, I think there are some settings in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.ops (orsomethingorother) to set how the pcmcia acts when it detects a network device...

Have you tried using the GUI? When dealing with wireless on RH9 I've found this tool to be very very useful (nearly foolproof :)) That's what I always used to start the eth1 for the wireless and make setting changes.

When I was using a LinkSys wpc11 (with Red Hat 9), all I had to touch was this GUI...no manual file configs needed at all, just set the inferface to activate on boot and it was all good (although the wlan would activate after it run NTP, so that would fail ;))

[jasonmgeorge]

When I installed the wireless card intially I used the GUI in RH9 and everything was working. The person that connected me to the network at school, however, did several things using the terminal and vi. I'm not particularly versed in linux so I couldn't follow. Last night I tried removing all the network devices using the GUI , then replaced them again with the GUI, hoping it would fix problems I couldnt' find. I still couldn't get a link.

At any rate, I tried moving pcmcia after network but I can't get a link again. Since that caused several errors on boot, I went ahead and moved pcmcia back to S24.

I guess the problem is I don't fully understand all the files that control the wireless adapter in RH9. Maybe someone could tell me where to start?

[jasonmgeorge]

Well, I've finally made it back to school and I have no problem getting a network link. At home however I am still unable to connect. Both connections are essentially the same (as far as I can tell at least). The only difference that I notice is that the connection at school uses 64-bit encryption key, and my home connection is set up for a 128-bit encryption key.

Where should I be looking for the problem?

[Icarus]

Try using an encryption key ;)

Can you turn off encryption and try it? Probably more likely to be able to do that at home...

[jasonmgeorge]

Yeah, I tried disabling the encryption key at home but I still couldn't get a link. It's been a little over ten days since I messed with my settings at home though. Since I'm a little hazy on what I did I'll try again tonight, but I don't beleive that's the issue.

[Icarus]

There are many things it could be
SSID is incorrect or not broadcasting
Wrong encryption key
MAC is blocked on the AP (doubtfull in this case)
and a few others I can't think of right now :)