Netgear WG511T won't work with madwifi driver

[c84]

Hey all. I'm a Linux newbie. I thought I was computer literate until I switched, but heh....I sure do have a lot to learn I've found. I love Linux and have no desire to give it up, but if I can't get my WiFi card to work, I'll have very little choice.

The basics:

I'm running Mandrake/Mandriva Linux LE 2005 with kernel version 2.6.11 and have applied all updates from Mandriva. /sbin/lspci does not exist according to Linux. My computer is a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop.

Okay...so here's the scoop. I NEED my WiFi access to get onto the internet and get work done. So I hooked up directly and went through Graham's excellent guide to install madwifi into Linux, as I have been told that the madwifi supports cards with the Atheros chipset...which includes my Netgear WG511T cardbus made in Taiwan. Before I installed the driver, my card flashed with one light (of two), which tells me there is no communication with the computer. Now, however, after I installed the driver, the card will flash its two lights on and off out of sync, which means searching for wireless network. Problem is that, even with such a strong network around me in my home, Linux refuses to make contact with my card; the Mandrake control center comes up blank when I open it, and will not find a network, and I can't tell if it is properly communicating with my card or not. I went and fiddled with network setting in the control center, telling Mandrake to set up a new wireless network, and I tried to configure it manually in those settings. Sadly, all that did was slow my boot to a crawl (in verbose load I can see it is trying to run through a connection process with our network and failing, reverting to my ethernet card where, again, nothing happens [there obviously]). I can assure that our network is just fine; I can get onto my network just fine in Windows. I have a WEP 128 bit encryption, but nothing anything more advanced. I think it says something that my card appears to be searching for a network now that madwifi is installed, but I need it to find one, and it just won't do it under Linux (I imagine its in Linux and not the card itself). Any ideas? HELP!!!!

[AlexK]

can you post the output of this command:

iwconfig

(you need to be root to run it).

[c84]

can you post the output of this command:

iwconfig

(you need to be root to run it).

[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions.

ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.427 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/94 Signal level=-95 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.

[AlexK]

ok then, the drivers are installed fine, the card is just not associating with the AP, so execute the following commands as root:

iwconfig ath0 ssid "My ssid"
iwconfig ath0 key s&#58;"My_key"  <-- if you use hexadecimal key, replace s&#58;"My Key" with xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx where xxxxxxxxxx is the key.
ifconfig ath0 down
ifconfig ath0 up
iwconfig    <--------- if everything correct, the entry next to Access Point should show something other than 00&#58;00&#58;00&#58;00&#58;00&#58;00
ping -c 4 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx  <---- replace this with your AP's address
kate /etc/resolv.conf &

the last command "kate /etc/resolv.conf" is to edit the resolv.conf file, you can replace kate with your favourite text editor e.g. vi, emacs, gedit etc.. in the resolv.conf file add this line:

nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx  <--- replace with AP's address

now do this command:

ping -c 4 www.google.com

[c84]

THANK YOU for your help. It has been very needed. However, we aren't completely out of the woods. The card will recognize the wireless network and pick up the MAC address of the router. However, even though I've double and triple checked the code, it still will not connect to the network (even though Mandrake sees it, it just won't connect at all. It sits there and does nothing). Any ideas? Thanks.

[AlexK]

try pinging the router again as well as google and paste the output here. Also what is the new output from iwconfig?