[SOLVED]wireless won't connect

[plant17]

Re: wireless won't connect

All downloaded and on my machine I have the following:
Run Wicd; when I select this nothing seems to happen (nothing visible)
Wicd Client KDE; when I select this nothing seems to happen (nothing visible)
Wicd preferences; I don't know enough to fiddle in here
Wicd Network manager; seems straightforward but althought the password is correct, it tells me I have a bad password. There are many possible selections for password entry, I have a WPA-PSK which I assume is the WPA 1/2 Preshared Key.

Is the other knetwork manager still there blocking me, if so how do I get rid of it? Should I?

What's next

[wizard10000]

Re: wireless won't connect

Is the other knetwork manager still there blocking me, if so how do I get rid of it? Should I?

Yes, you should.

sudo apt-get remove network-manager* plasma-widget-networkmanager

[plant17]

Re: wireless won't connect

No success, it's still the same.

For information it is "plasma-widget-networkmangement", took me a while to figure it out.

But as I said, there is no change, still no wireless with a "bad password" message (and yes, the password is correct).

Next option?

john

[wizard10000]

Re: wireless won't connect

No success, it's still the same.

For information it is "plasma-widget-networkmangement", took me a while to figure it out.

But as I said, there is no change, still no wireless with a "bad password" message (and yes, the password is correct).

Next option?

john

Sorry about the networkmanagement thing - I was looking in synaptic and the package name was truncated.

Next, it'd be a good idea to double-check security settings on the access point and make sure the workstation wireless security settings match. Assuming your wireless interface is eth1, you run

sudo iwlist eth1 scan

which will tell you exactly what security settings you need. My scan looks like this -

eth1 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: BC:AE:C5:C3:1B:A8
ESSID:"wizard"
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.427 GHz (Channel 4)
Quality:5/5 Signal level:-56 dBm Noise level:-92 dBm
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Cell 02 - Address: 00:11:6B:16:30:BE
ESSID:"default"
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Quality:1/5 Signal level:-85 dBm Noise level:-92 dBm
Encryption keyff
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Cell 03 - Address: BC:AE:C5:C3:05:E5
ESSID:"wizard"
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.427 GHz (Channel 4)
Quality:4/5 Signal level:-63 dBm Noise level:-92 dBm
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s

Cell 1 and 3 are my network, cell 2 is one of my neighbors' and the neighbor's network is unsecured

Reading the stuff you can see I use WPA2-PSK and the the group and pairwise ciphers (CCMP) tell you I'm using strictly AES encryption and that I don't allow TKIP on my wireless network.

Anyway, you should be able to make sure your workstation settings line up with your access point if you run an iwlist scan. iwlist will tell you exactly what your network's looking for.

Hope this helps -

[GreyGeek]

Re: wireless won't connect

Kubuntu cames with knm-runtime and some knetworkmanager guis and stuff installed. They immediately found my wireless and had no problem connecting. But, I wanted to switch to Wicd so that my wireless connected before kdm started up, so if the desktop crashed I still had access to the web without going through a cli connection hassle. Synaptic used to automatically downloaded wicd, then removed knetworkmanager, and then installed wicd and reestablished a wireless connection. It appeared to do the same under Lucid but upon examination I found that wicd was using knm components! Removing ALL of the knm components resulted in wicd's config screen not being able to set up a WPA connection! I ended up having to remove every library related to knm and wicd itself. Reboot. Plug in an eth0 cable, run Synaptic and install wicd only. The gave me only wicd with WPA settings capability.

You can avoid the necessity of having to use an eth cable connection by FIRST installing the following packages:

python-urwid
python-wicd
wicd
wicd-cli
wicd-curses
wicd-daemon
wicd-gtk

ANd then, completely removing the following packages:

modemmanager
network-manager
network-manager-openconnect
network-manager-openvpn
network-manager-pptp
network-manager-vpnc
knm-runtime
network-manager-kde
plasma-widget-networkmanagement

Reboot. Then, just to be sure, open a konsole and issue
sudo apt-get autoremove

Then run wicd and set up your wireless.

[plant17]

Re: wireless won't connect

Thanks to both of you for trying to help.

First Wizard10000. I get the following result:

"eth0 doesn't support scanning"

eth0 is my connection, but I tried eth1 as well just to be sure, same thing.

Now Grey Geek:

I tried all and had no change in behaviour, that said there are a couple of questions:

On the install side:
I have "wicd-kde" installed which is not on your list, should I remove it?

On the remove side:
"network-manager" doesn't exist but "network-manager-gnome" does, should I remove it?


Thanks to all for the help, perhaps we will get there in the end.

John

[wizard10000]

Re: wireless won't connect

Thanks to both of you for trying to help.

First Wizard10000. I get the following result:

"eth0 doesn't support scanning"

eth0 is my connection, but I tried eth1 as well just to be sure, same thing.

Strange. I'm pretty sure all wireless cards support scanning - that's how they tell which networks are available - which doesn't help much, other than for me to offer that maybe

sudo iwconfig

will give you the name of your wireless interface. eth0 is usually a wired network card if there's one in your machine. Can you post the output of iwconfig, please?

And - I'm not Grey Geek, but network-manager-gnome should be removed as well. The wildcard in

sudo apt-get remove network-manager*

should have caught that one.

thanks -

[plant17]

Re: wireless won't connect

Thanks wiz,

Here is the result of the wiconfig after I removed the network-manager-gnome:

lo    no wireless extensions.

eth0   no wireless extensions.

wlan0   IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any 
     Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated  
     Tx-Power=20 dBm  
     Retry long limit:7  RTS thr:off  Fragment thr:off
     Encryption key:off
     Power Management:on

There seems to be a wlan there, but I have no idea what the rest means.

I ran the scan on wlan0 and got the response "no scan results".

Thanks for taking the time to look at this for me.

John

[wizard10000]

Re: wireless won't connect

It says that your wireless card is working, John - but it's at wlan0 and is most likely turned off. Let's try this next -

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

The first line restarts networking, the second insures your wireless card is activated and the third tries the scan again.

cheers -

[plant17]

Re: wireless won't connect

Still no luck.

Here is the result of the last commands you sent me.

MYID:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
[sudo] password for ME: 
 * Running /etc/init.d/networking restart is deprecated because it may not enable again some interfaces
 * Reconfiguring network interfaces...                        [ OK ] 
MYID:~$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
MYID:~$ sudo iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0   No scan results

MYID and ME replace the real names, (maybe I'm just paranoid)

Out of interest I ran iconfig again and got something new:

eth0   Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:a0:cc:d3:c5:08 
     UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
     RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
     TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
     collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
     RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
     Interrupt:10 Base address:0xcc00 

lo    Link encap:Local Loopback 
     inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
     inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
     UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
     RX packets:92 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
     TX packets:92 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
     collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
     RX bytes:5672 (5.6 KB) TX bytes:5672 (5.6 KB)

wlan0   Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:5b:8e:16:96 
     UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
     RX packets:14 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
     TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
     collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
     RX bytes:1694 (1.6 KB) TX bytes:108 (108.0 B)

I can't read this either but even an inexerienced user can see that there are too many "error" notices and lots of zeroes.

What do you make of it.

John

[wizard10000]

Re: wireless won't connect

Everything there looks 100% normal, John. Let me see if I can share a little bit about what you've got there -

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:a0:cc:d3:c5:08
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xcc00

This is your wired network card - it's enabled but not plugged into anything so you shouldn't see any received (RX) or transmitted (TX) packets. No collisions and no transmitted or received bytes. Pretty normal.


lo is what's called a loopback adapter and is how your machine talks to itself. Nothing to see there so we''ll move on

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:5b:8e:16:96
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:14 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1694 (1.6 KB) TX bytes:108 (108.0 B)

This is your wireless card - which isn't connected to anything but has received a few packets from your access point. It's not associated with the access point so you can't log on to it yet, but the TX and RX packets mean your wireless card is talking just fine.

If you click on the wicd icon in your tray you should be able to see your access point - can you?

[plant17]

Re: wireless won't connect

Thanks for that,

Yes I can see my wireless point, I have always been able to but when I try to connect I get the "Bad password" message although the password is correct.

John

[wizard10000]

Re: wireless won't connect

Thanks for that,

Yes I can see my wireless point, I have always been able to but when I try to connect I get the "Bad password" message although the password is correct.

Okay - there are only two things left.

Either the passphrase is incorrect (they're case-sensitive) or the encryption algorithm is incorrect. I wish scan worked

If you're certain the passphrase is correct and you're also certain your network uses WPA 1 or 2 try both "WPA 1/2 (Passphrase)" and "WPA 1/2 (Pre-Shared Key)".

I *think* you have to re-enter the password when you flip between those options.

If neither works your best bet will be to log on to your router's management interface over a wired connection and double-check wireless security settings and re-enter the wireless password in the router. Then you should have everything you need to connect.

If it *still* doesn't connect, completely disable wireless security on the router and see if it connects then. If it does, re-enable your security settings and duplicate them on the PC.

Hope this helps -

edit: Before you go digging out the LAN cable and moving furniture, look at the properties of your wireless connection in wicd. At the bottom of the screen there's an information button that should tell you whether your access point is using WEP, WPA or WPA2.

[plant17]

Re: wireless won't connect

When I remove all security, my wicd doesn't see my wireless connection anymore "unable to Get IP address".

Back to the original setting, wicd is telling me: "100% WPA Channel 6"


I think some of the problem may be with the security settings. The choices on my router don't always match exactly the choices give by wicd.

These are the options on my router:
WEP
802.1X
WPA-PSK(this is the one I have enabled)
WPA
WPA2-PSK(AES)
WPA2(AES)
WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK


My wicd gives me these choices:
WPA1/2(Passphrase)
WPA1/2 (Preshared key) (i have this one)
WEP(Hex[0-9/A-F])
WEP(Passphrase)
WEP (Shared/estricted)
LEAP with WEP
TTLS with WEP
EAP-FAST
PEAP with GTC
PEAP with TKIP/MSCHAPV2
EAP-TLS

Now that's an anacronym nightmare.

John

[wizard10000]

Re: wireless won't connect

I only use AES encryption on my wireless connections - you might try WPA2-PSK(AES).

The difference is that WPA1 defaults to an encryption algorithm called TKIP that can be cracked given enough time.

WPA2-AES encryption uses a 256-bit key and can't be cracked given the current level of technology. From Wikipedia -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance...ption_Standard

...For cryptographers, a cryptographic "break" is anything faster than a brute force attack - trying every possible key. Thus, an attack against a 256-bit-key AES requiring 2200 operations (compared to 2256 possible keys) would be considered a break, even though 2200 operations would still take far longer than the age of the universe to complete.

Considering that not only would it take longer than the age of the universe to crack the key, AES rotates keys at set intervals (mine does every 30 minutes - most home access points using AES do once an hour or so) so if they can't crack it in a half hour they'd have to start all over anyway

But I digress.

Set up your encryption however you like and please re-enter the password on the access point, remembering that the passwords are case-sensitive. Then set up the PC and the thing *should* work.

The only other thing I can think of is that wpasupplicant *must be* installed for you to be able to do either WPA or WPA2. I think it is installed because you were able to successfully connect once, but it might be worth checking.

cheers -

edit: I had one other thought and forgive me for asking a stupid question, but if this is a laptop are you certain your caps lock or num lock key is set correctly?