Installation of a Wireless Network Card

[thomaswebb]

Hi,

I am running a WinXP Home/Fedora Core 4 Dual Boot system.

I have recently moved locations and have a new network system, switching from a LAN to a WLAN. The network card that was given to me is this:

http://www.newlinkproducts.co.uk/pro...D=2&prodID=251

(A NEWlink NLWL-PCI01)

I have tried to install this card using my windows driver under ndiswrapper. When i type ndiswrapper -linto the terminal it states that my driver and hardware are present as expected. However, when i have configured my network settings through the OS GUI i receive the following error:

SET ESSID (8B1A): SET FAILED on device wlan0; invalid argument.

Im not sure if this is to do with the networks SSID or not. The SSID is '13HawksLaneWLAN' with a WEP key of 10 hex values.

Any help on solving this error is greatly appreciated,

Thomas

[AlexK]

try doing it through command line as root, i.e.:

iwconfig wlan0 essid my_essid
iwconfig wlan0 key xxxxxxxxxx <-- replace with WEP key in hex format

[thomaswebb]

HI, tried doing it through the terminal, but got same message back. Also, when i did iwconfig wlan0 i got this warning:

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension, but has been compiled with version 17, therefore some driver features may not be available.

Could this have something to do with the problem?

TIA

[AlexK]

Ignore the wireless extensions error, it just means that the extensions compiled into your kernel and the version of wireless tools package you are using is mismatched, no big deal. The only way I have seen to fix that message is to recompile the kernel with the newer wireless extensions.

Otherwise, I don't know what could be causing the problem.

[thomaswebb]

I typed in the command lspci and got the following results:

05:08.0 Ethernet Controller: Marvell Technology Corp Ltd.: Unknown Device 1faa (rev 03)

Which seems ok to me. And when i did iwlist wlan0 scanning i got all the surrounding networks i can see in Windows. However, i try to set the SSID using iwconfig wlan0 13HawksLaneWLAN and get that SET error back.

If it helps, here is a copy of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfgt-wlan0 :

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
IPV6INIT=no
ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=yes
PEERDNS=yes
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=00:40:f4:d4:da:ab
BOOTPROTO=none
NETMASK=255.255.225.0
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=192.168.1.21
DOMAIN=
ESSID=13HawksLaneWLAN
CHANNEL=11
MODE=Managed
RATE=Auto

[AlexK]

the command should actually be:
iwconfig wlan0 essid 13HawksLaneWLAN

otherwise I don't see where the problem could be.

[thomaswebb]

sorry, did actually enter the 'essid' bit into the terminal at the time.

If anybody can help solve my problem i will be forever greatful to them. I want to permanently switch over to Fedora but i cannot do without the internet for uni work and GAIM.

[thomaswebb]

Ok, bit of an update. Still cannot get it working .

I have noticed that Windows has the following hardware settings:

IRQ = 16
Memory Range: FC5F0000 - FC5FFFFF & FC5E0000 - FC5EFFFF

Where as linux has assumed these settings:

IRQ = 10
Memory Range: FC310000 - FC320000

My instinct tells me that this is not right?

Can anyone tell me if this is whats causing the problem?