[TriLUG] Wireless and Mandriva 2006/2007

[OlsonE at aosa.army.mil]

One of the #1 reasons why I try to stay with native linux compatible
wireless cards. ndiswrapper was nothing but a pita to me. I got about as
far as you did, and could get WEP working, but nothing else. Ultimately
I gave up ...and got something a little more supported (without the
fluff of configuring). 

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On
Behalf Of Steve Litt
Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 10:22 AM
To: trilug at trilug.org
Subject: [TriLUG] Wireless and Mandriva 2006/2007

Hi all,

Mandriva 2007 has a built in native Linux rt2500usb driver for the
linksys WUSB54G wireless NIC. It creates device rausb0. Unfortunately,
it's intermittent, glitchy, and often freezes the entire machine. I have
no proof yet, but I suspect that this rausb0 prevents me from using
ndiswrapper plus the Windows driver to create a wlan0.

Mandriva 2006 doesn't have the native driver, and it's a 5 minute
process to use ndiswrapper plus the windows driver to create wlan0,
which seems to work better than rausb0.

Now I'm at the stage of needing to configure the (Mandriva
specific) /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 file for
encryption, and the information is hard to come by. Does anyone have
first hand knowledge of configuring ifcfg-wlan0 for Mandriva?

Some specific questions:

WIRELESS_ENC_KEY='open s: mypassword' doesn't work for WEP, WPA1 OR
WPA2. Why?
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY='restricted s: mypassword' doesn't work either. Why?
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=MYHEX works in WEP, as long as it's the right key.

Last night I could get it to work on WEP identifying all 4 keys (4
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY statements) as long as key #1 was last. Surprisingly,
after switching the access point's default key to key 3 and powercycling
the access point, on the client it was still necessary to place key 1
last of the 4 WIRELESS_ENC_KEY statements, each of which looked like
this:

WIRELESS_ENC_KEY='[1] MYHEX [1]'

Why must #1 be last even though #3 is the default key according to the
access point?

Overnight I powered down all computers but kept the accesspoint running.
In the morning bootup, the computer could no longer get an IP, gateway
and DNS server from dhcp, even though a (different) wired box could get
them from dhcp, and according to the IPCop firewall on which I keep the
leases, there were plenty of spare, expired leases ready for use. Last
night the setup worked through multiple reboots, but this morning it
doesn't work at all, even if the key 3 WIRELESS_ENC_KEY is placed at the
bottom. What could have happened overnight?

Of all the things I've worked on in Linux, wireless (especially with
encryption) is about the most difficult. Hundreds of variables, few good
diagnostic tools (as far as I know), GUI tools that silently alter
config files in unacceptable ways, situations where state is dragged
around sometimes necessitating a reboot after a change, serious
distribution and version dependencies, and not enough documentation
(even though there's voluminous documentation, it's still not exactly
what's needed).

Anyway, anyone who knows Mandriva's ifcfg-wlan0 syntax, could you please
explain how it works?

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
   * Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
   * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist

http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore
http://www.troubleshooters.com/utp/tcourses.htm
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