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    Wireless problems: no automatic connection or static IP

    I have an HP Mini netbook running 8.04 with wicd as the network manager. First problem: Lately it fails to connect to my wireless router when it comes out of sleep. Wicd says it's connected to the router, but I can't ping the other computers on the network or get an Internet connection. I have to open wicd, disconnect from the router, then connect again to get a working connection.

    Second problem: I have static IP addresses assigned to the computers on the network: at least, their /etc/network/interfaces files are configured that way. The netbook is supposed to have an address ending in 101. But when the system boots (with a connection), or I go through the above routine to get a connection, the address changes to 102. When I do
    Code:
    sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
    the address returns to 101, it's still connected, and everything's good.

    Now, for nearly a year the connection with the proper address happened automatically. I can't think of any changes I've made that could cause this behavior, other than the regular updates. I'll admit that my understanding of static IP addresses is vague. I suppose I ought to do something to the router (Linksys WRT54GL), but there doesn't appear to be anyplace in the router setup to assign IP addresses to MAC IDs. I tried disabling the DHCP server, but then wicd complained that it couldn't get an address and crashed. I gather that the router wants to assign the 102 address to the netbook, and somehow when networking is restarted the netbook asserts itself and claims the 101 address. But I don't understand why the /etc/network/interfaces file doesn't make that assertion when the system boots, or when I do the manual connection on wakeup.

    One more bit of information: when I'm at work, the netbook connects immediately with the wireless routers there when it comes out of sleep.

    Any ideas on either problem?

    #2
    Re: Wireless problems: no automatic connection or static IP

    Maybe post the contents of /etc/network/interfaces for all the machines on the network. Also most routers have a place where you can reserve ip addresses through DHCP but if you are going to set up static ip's in interfaces then you should not use DHCP on the router. Personally I reserve the ip's on the router and set interfaces to use DHCP.

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      #3
      Re: Wireless problems: no automatic connection or static IP

      I wound up upgrading the netbook to 9.10. I had been wanting to try it, and thought it might solve the problem. Turns out support for my wireless chipset (Broadcom BCM4312) broke somewhere between Hardy and Karmic (problem with the kernel, I think). Took me a day to get it working: finally had to use the Windows driver with ndiswrapper. Works great now, and wicd seems to be happy.

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