Wireless problem with ndiswrapper and wpa

[AlexK]

Ok,
I installed gentoo on my desktop system and so far everything except wireless works fine. The card I am using is a Netgear wg311v2 (acx111 chipset) with ndiswrapper as the driver. I am using ndiswrapper for the driver as wpa_supplicant doesn't support the native acx driver. The error message I get is:

Feb 1 11:30:11 Mercury ndiswrapper version 1.1 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=no)
Feb 1 11:30:11 Mercury ndiswrapper: driver wg311v2 (NETGEAR, Inc.,06/17/2004,6.0.5.30) loaded
Feb 1 11:30:11 Mercury ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] enabled at IRQ 5
Feb 1 11:30:11 Mercury ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:07.0[A] -> Link [LNKD] -> GSI 5 (level, low) -> IRQ 5
Feb 1 11:30:11 Mercury ndiswrapper: using irq 5
Feb 1 11:30:11 Mercury wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0f:b5:43:83:1f using driver wg311v2, configuration file 104C:9066:1385:4C00.5.conf
Feb 1 11:30:11 Mercury wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP, WPA with TKIP
Feb 1 11:30:17 Mercury rc-scripts: No loaded modules provide "default" (default_start)
Feb 1 11:30:17 Mercury rc-scripts: ERROR: Problem starting needed services.
Feb 1 11:30:17 Mercury rc-scripts: "netmount" was not started.

/etc/conf.d/net contains the following:

config_eth0=( "192.168.0.111" )
routes_eth0=( "default gw 192.168.0.1" )

modules=( "wpa_supplicant" )
wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dndiswrapper"
config_wlan0=( "192.168.0.5" )
config_wlan0=( "default gw 192.168.0.1" )
channel_wlan0="9"
mode_wlan0="manged"

/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf contains:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0
network={
ssid="my_ssid"
mode=0
proto=WPA
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk="my_wpa_passphrase"
priority=5
}

I linked net.wlan0 to net.lo i.e. ln -s net.lo net.wlan0 (in /etc/inid.d dir), added net.wlan0 to default runlevel and removed the wired card (eth0), but still no go.

ndiswrapper -l returns hardware + driver present, iwconfig shows an entry for wlan0, but still that error comes. Ping does not work, returns cannot connect to network.

Also, another strange thing is iwconfig shows that the card is associated with AP, but ifconfig doesn't show the card.

Any help is appreciated.

[spencerf]

can you connect manually by issuing these commands?

#ifconfig wlan0 up
#iwconfig wlan0 key "key-if-you-have-one"
#iwconfig wlan0 essid "name-of-your-essid"
#dhcpcd wlan0

if this works then its something in your script if not then your interface isn't set up right


EDIT: I just saw that you linked to net.lo you don't want this I don't think look at my post below for linking to net.eth0

[spencerf]

also I believe to make net.wlan0 an initscript all you need to do is

ln -s net.eth0 net.wlan0 in the /etc/init.d/ directory

also under your net script you have "manged" instead of "managed"

also do you have a static ip or dynamic ip because if its dynamic then config_wlan0 should be set to dhcp

next. I don't know if you need the wpa_supplicant because gentoo has a file you can edit in /etc/conf.d/wireless

for setting up the init script of net.wlan0

take a look at the wireless config file it is well documented and works great for me. If you edit this you can just

rc-update add net.wlan0 default

then add ndiswrapper to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6

[AlexK]

spencerf, thanks for your replies and tips. Especially the spelling mistake


The reason why I used wpa_supplicant.conf instead of wireless is because my network uses wpa encryption, the configuration need to reside in wpa_supplicant.

The problem was solved thanks to a hint from a poster on gentoo forums. It was another "spelling" mistake on my part

in my /etc/conf.d/net, this line:
config_wlan0=( "default gw 192.168.0.1" )
should infact be changed to
routes_wlan0=( "default gw 192.168.0.1" )

once again, thanks for all your help and hints.