wireless woes

[pdp11boy]

Hi,

I have an old PC which I've newly reborn completely as a Kubuntu box. All is well.

I bought a Netgear WG111 USB adapter, set my router to filter its MAC address, plugged the adapter into my Kubuntu box and booted. Kubuntu found the WG111 straight away. ifconfig shows it there OK as wlan0. The Wireless Assistant even shows its found the router on the other side of the room.

But I can't connect from anything to the Internet. I can't find anything on how to set up WPA, there's only a box to enter SSID and WEP (which I'm not using). So I imagine the hardware is all OK and the adapter can see the router OK and I don't need to install any drivers (or do I?).

I've noticed some stuff on knetworkmanager and so on but all that seems to assume you're installing drivers for the wireless card/adapter which it doesn't look like I need to since they're talking amongst themselves, just not connecting out to the net.

Anyone got any ideas? Tips? Pointers?

I've been using Unix for a long long time but Linux and Kubutnu are brand new to me...

Many thanks,
David.

[K0LO]

Re: wireless woes

David:

The native Kubuntu distribution does not support WPA encryption out of the box. If you want to do that you need to either add the package wpasupplicant and then struggle endlessly with the configuration files, or else add the package knetworkmanager, which seems to "just work" for most people.

I've done both but lately I'm using knetworkmanager, which works very well for me.

[pdp11boy]

Re: wireless woes

Hi,

Thanks - I'll give that a go then. I was also struggling with Adept since it says its database is locked (and I haven't done anything but install it all!) but I noticed on here someone else with the same problem so I'll try that and then see if I can fetch knetworkmanager...

Cheers,
David

[K0LO]

Re: wireless woes

David:

Maybe Adept crashed and is still running. Try:

sudo killall adept

to see if you can kill off the process.

Here's a thread describing a couple of other things you can try in order to fix Adept:
Database Locked - Adept Installer

[pdp11boy]

Re: wireless woes

Hi,

Can I ask if you do

sudo apt-get install network-manager-kde and you get back
E: Couldn't find package network-manager-kde

what am I doing wrong?

Also where on earth is Firefox and how do you start it? Adept says it's installed (I think...)

Nearly there...! I'm sending this from Kubuntu this time instead of Windows!

Thanks,
David

[K0LO]

Re: wireless woes

Wrong package name. It's:

sudo apt-get install knetworkmanager

Another way to do this is to click on the "K" menu and choose "Add/Remove Programs" to see a GUI version of the installer, complete with descriptions of the packages. Or, K menu --> System --> Package Manager (Adept) to see a GUI version with even more information about each package.

Firefox normally installs to the K menu --> Internet --> Web Browser (Firefox). If not, you can start it from a console with:

firefox

[pdp11boy]

Re: wireless woes

Hi,

Even with knetworkmanager I get E: Couldn't find package (and also through Adept too) it is on the internet though. Do I need to point to a different repository or add one or...?

What might I be doing wrong here (cos I'm baffled...!)?

Thanks again,
David

[K0LO]

Re: wireless woes

Yes, you need to have the Universe and Multiverse repositories enabled. Here is a copy of my sources.list file (not that it's the only way to set this up; see other posts for more info):

## main repository
deb [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper main restricted
deb-src [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper main restricted

## Updates and bug fixes
deb [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper-updates main restricted
deb-src [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper-updates main restricted

## Security updates
deb [url]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu[/url] dapper-security main restricted
deb-src [url]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu[/url] dapper-security main restricted

## Universe and Multiverse repositories
deb [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper universe multiverse
deb [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper-updates universe multiverse
deb [url]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu[/url] dapper-security universe multiverse

deb-src [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper universe multiverse
deb-src [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper-updates universe multiverse
deb-src [url]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu[/url] dapper-security universe multiverse

## Backports repository
deb [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse

You will also want to use a repository in or near your own country (not sure where you're located).

It sounds like you're getting there! You'll have the jump on a lot of newbies like myself if you have a good Unix background. I'm always looking up some terminal commands in the manual or searching for better ways to do things. Welcome to Kubuntu!

[pdp11boy]

Re: wireless woes

Hi,

Cheers for that. I'm away to read up on repositories and see how to set them up. In fact, I think I'll away and read up on some more bits too over the next week or so just so I don't become a pest on here.

(Am in Edinburgh and I have the original Bell Labs Unix journals etc at the other side of this room. Kinda changed a wee bit by the looks...!)

Thanks for your help
David.

[pdp11boy]

Re: wireless woes

All repositoried up, Firefox installed and working, knetworkmanager installed too (I think Kubuntu needs a post-install checklist...).

Wireless assistant can see my router (but can't connect) but there's no WPA options in knetworkmanager... though I've just read you don't get WPA options unless the router is broadcasting the SSID so will try that tomorrow.

Progress!

Cheers,
David

[K0LO]

Re: wireless woes

Any luck David?

Mark

[pdp11boy]

Re: wireless woes

Hi Mark,

Not yet.

I found a post last night about having to set the router back to broadcast the SSID otherwise it won't let you use WPA, so I'll have to try that. Am trying to read up a bit more on it though since I don't think it's very good if you broadcast the SSID so looks like this is something that needs fixed in knetworkmanager (if true).

Will report back once I've had a go. I suppose it won't kill me to trail an ethernet cable across the room since that's what I have been doing and it works just fine but I just really wanted the wirelessness to work and it appears to be soooo close...!

Cheers,
David

[K0LO]

Re: wireless woes

I used to be paranoid about not broadcasting an SSID from my router, but then I found out how easy it is to detect the presence of a wireless network, hidden SSID or not. So now I let my router broadcast an SSID but make up some nonsensical SSID (like qzx34hx78) that does not reveal any personally-identifiable information. To me, a better defense is to use MAC address filtering if your router supports that, which will only allow connections by PCs that are on your list of allowable MAC addresses.

If you still prefer wireless with WPA and without broadcasting an SSID, you can do that but you will have to do a little more work with the configuration. Here's an article that you might want to look at when you get adventurous: WPA2/RSN.

I used to do something like that, but I travel with my laptop and currently prefer the automatic nature of knetworkmanager.

[pdp11boy]

Re: wireless woes

Hi,

I don't broadcast the SSID, I've got MAC filtering and WPA so I believe that's as much as you can do at home...!

Anyway, here's today's installment...

I set my router to broacast the SSID.
Booted up my Linux PC (feels weird saying that!)
Noticed that wpasupplicant could be upgraded in Adept. So did. And rebooted.
But it's no different...
The Wireless Assistant can see the router, SSID etc but is obsessed with WEP (and there's no WPA option).
Knetworkmanager I think knows the wireless router is there but it isn't listed if you open it and there's no WPA type setup screens.

So am now baffled. My adapter is the Netgear WG111v2 which according to a Kubuntu magazine I bought (which started me on all this) would just work. Obviously it does but maybe just with WEP I think.

Any ideas? Should I post this out as a separate thread now? The sheer number of folk moaning about wireless problems would seem to indicate Kubuntu is weak at this.

(I surrender for today anyway...!)

Cheers,
David

[K0LO]

Re: wireless woes

David:

You've done everything correctly that I can see. To troubleshoot further I would recommend checking the other (Ubuntu) forum, which is much more active than the Kubuntu forum.

Try searching for "Netgear WG111v2" in the Ubuntu Forum Search Engine. Here's what the search engine found when I tried it: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/search.php?searchid=8730789. You'll see a lot of posts about the Netgear adapter, so maybe you can find a good solution in one of them.

Good luck!

Mark