Odd wireless connection problem with KDE

[The Liquidator]

Hi all

Our friendly IT guy has set up a few of us with a wireless connection in the office. It's a standard Belkin but connected to a different external connection. It's faster and with no download limit. It's a simple WPA/WPA2 Psk connection - at least that's what my Android phone says.

With Knetworkmanager I can succesfully connect to my home wireless and VPN to my work desktop. Dead easy once I was told the settings. The reason I mention this is that I don't believe WICD can do that.

The new connection is quite a different matter I'm afraid. No matter how many times I attempt to configure it I get the folowing:

Wireless icon shown in system tray
Shown as "connected" in the configuration panel
In the system tray panel it doesn't go past "configuring interface". I tell a lie there - it has connected twice, randomly and for no apparent reason. On boot it returns to the "norm" i.e doesn't get past configuring stage.


I have tried:

Despite my comments above, I gave WICD a try. It failed to connect due to "bad password"
Opensuse 12.1- live DVD and Kubuntu 11.10 live CD. I got precisely the same problem (stuck at configuring interface).
Ubuntu 11.10 and Lubuntu 11.10 (both live). A first time connection every time.

The fact that the 2 non-KDE live distros connect straight away suggests to me that this is a KDE-specific problem rather than a kubuntu one. So far as WICD is concerned I can't rule out the possibility that on removing networkmanager I inadvertently left behind something that conflicts with WICD.

Any thoughts folks?

[The Liquidator]

Okay - this has now developed into an evil plan by kubuntu to make me look incredibly stupid - not hard I suppose.

After over 3 days of unsuccesfully trying to make a connection for no reason apparent to me (I haven't updated anything/entered different data/done anything different) it has just started working and several reboots later remains the case. Weird. Unless it goes wrong again (in which case I'll let you know) no need for anyone to respond.

Scratch that - it's just died again and we are now back to "configuring the interface"

[SecretCode]

I've often found that things just fix themselves after a while with Kubuntu - and remarked on it quite a few times for other posters here!

And that's kind of annoying, not to know what caused it to fail in the first place.

Now that yours has died again you have the worst situation - the intermittent problem. We hates it, preciousss.

To recap: it worked on Kub. 11.10 with knetworkmanager for a while, lasting for several reboots? And then failed within 5 mins of you posting here? Clearly you need to stop posting ...

Off the top of my head, possible causes for intermittent failure to connect: weak signal (do you remember how many bars showed in the notification icon when you were connected?); interference e.g. from another WAP on a neighbouring channel; ... none of these would account for Ubuntu and Lubuntu working first time - but unless you tried them many times at different times of day, you might just have been lucky (intermittent success, the smiling brother of intermittent failure).

(Re-reading your post - you talk about a new WAP at work, but you're connecting from home and using a VPN. In this case the wireless in the office is irrelevant. Or is the problem connecting in the office?)

It might (but probably won't) be informative to see the output of iwconfig wlan0 and ifconfig wlan0.

[GreyGeek]

Do you have MAC filtering on? IF so, is your MAC in the wifi's list?

Or, did you recently change wifi apps. People who switch from KNM to WICD often don't clean out all the KNM stuff, which causes a WICD bad password problem.

[The Liquidator]

Thanks for that.

Yes, I was aware that WICD will only work properly if there are no traces of KNM in the system. I thought I had got rid of it completely but maybe not. However, I believe WICD will not do something I occasionally need to do, which is to remotely control my work desktop. I have an entry for "work" under the VPN tab in KNM and then connect to my desktop via KRDC. It's quite effective and KNM works well with it.

One point - shortly after my previous post it just started working. I don't know how or why, it just did. It's still working as I have just typed this on it, so I will tempt fate and mark the thread as solved. A little unsatisfactory though as I don't know why - must be just one of those things.

Thanks for the input.

[The Liquidator]

Thanks for that.

Yes, I was aware that WICD will only work properly if there are no traces of KNM in the system. I thought I had got rid of it completely but maybe not. However, I believe WICD will not do something I occasionally need to do, which is to remotely control my work desktop. I have an entry for "work" under the VPN tab in KNM and then connect to my desktop via KRDC. It's quite effective and KNM works well with it.

One point - shortly after my previous post it just started working. I don't know how or why, it just did. It's still working as I have just typed this on it, so I will tempt fate and mark the thread as solved. A little unsatisfactory though as I don't know why - must be just one of those things.

Thanks for the input.

[SecretCode]

One point - shortly after my previous post it just started working. I don't know how or why, it just did. It's still working as I have just typed this on it, so I will tempt fate and mark the thread as solved. A little unsatisfactory though as I don't know why - must be just one of those things.

Will keep fingers crossed.

[rms]

@The Liquidator

Maybe it's just external interference that's bothering you. Try switching to a different channel in router.