Wireless Problem Mandrake Powerpack 10.1

[gadolinium]

I know I know - I seem to be saying something a few other newbies have said as well - they are unable to get their wirless cards to work. It should be no surprise that I am no different.

I am very new to Linux - Just got it today and installed it.

I have a Compaq Presario x1000 dual-boating Win XP Pro & Mandrake Powerpack 10.1. The wireless card is Intel Pro/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (yes its a Centrino setup).

Linux detects the card and sees it and has drivers for it and everything - no problem. My problem is in the configuration in Mandrake. I am running WEP on the WAP, and I've put in all the settings I know (for instance the SSID broadcast name and the WEP key - but then there are other text fields (I believe one of them was frequency) and several others that I have no idea what to put in for them. Is anyone able to walk me through my configuration so I can get my wireless to work?
Thanks!

~Anthony

[ppuru]

I don't think you need to modify the other parameters - just make sure the ESSID and the WEP keys match.

First try out without the WEP.

[gadolinium]

Hey!

I got my wireless to work when I turned WEP off - so WEP seems to be the problem. I tried both 64 bit and 128 bit using both jsut the "passphrase" and the full hex number. Nothing seems to work. Any ideas?

~Anthony

[swemic]

I can't really say what exactly you are doing wrong here,
since I have no problem at all to use WEP in my configuration.
You should double check you Access Point configuration, enable WEP and after that try the comman

iwconfig wlan0 enc 0123456789ABCDEF0123456789

The example above is when you have enabled WEP-128 HEX encoding.
(Yes you must use exactly 26 HEX characters)
Change "wlan0" to your interface name.

[gadolinium]

I tried your command but it didn't work (I got an error).
Here's what happened.

iwconfig eth2 enc 4C5ADC0180 restricted <-- the 4c5adc0180 is my 64 bit hex encryption key

it came back with an error:
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2a) :
SET failed on device eth2: Operation not supported.

I then tried the command without the restricted command at the end and I got the exact same error.

...What does this mean?

~Anthony

[ppuru]

Hope the enc key matches the one you have defined on your accesspoint.

e.g. if you have defined key 0 on the accesspoint, your iwconfig should be

iwconfig eth2 essid <whatever> enc &#91;1&#93; BEAD5BA5EDF00DF00DFEEDF00D restricted

** Note F<zero><zero>D

you can also use key instead of enc. (man iwconfig)

I am not sure where Mandrake stores the keys.

you can try defining the KEY in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth2

add these 2 entries

ESSID=your essid
KEYn=your 26 hex character key.