Slackware 12 wlan (wireless) problems

[ljones]

Hello all!

I've just recently performed a complete and fresh installation of slackware 12. Up until recently, I was using slackware 11. The slackware installation was running on both a laptop and desktop PC, both are just plain old normal boring x86 32-bit systems. The wireless device I am using is a USB Netgear MA111. I connect to the internet via a server, which in turn is connected to a wireless router.

Under slackware 11, I could use the following script successfully to connect to the internet;


#!/bin/bash

modprobe prism2_usb prism2_doreset=1

wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_ifstate ifstate=enable
wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_hostwep decrypt=true encrypt=true
wlanctl-ng wlan0 dot11req_mibset mibattribute=dot11WEPDefaultKeyID=0
wlanctl-ng wlan0 dot11req_mibset mibattribute=dot11ExcludeUnencrypted=true
wlanctl-ng wlan0 dot11req_mibset mibattribute=dot11PrivacyInvoked=true
wlanctl-ng wlan0 dot11req_mibset mibattribute=dot11WEPDefaultKey0="XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:X X:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX"
wlanctl-ng wlan0 lnxreq_autojoin "ssid=home" authtype="opensystem"

ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.162 up
route add default gw 192.168.0.10


Under slackware 11, this works fine. Under slackware 12, it dosen't seem to work. If I try to ping - say - google.com I get absolutely nothing in return; under slackware 11 it would work fine. I know the internet is working as I am using another PC with slackware 11 on it, and the internet's working just fine (I'm doing it at the same time, . and with another netgear MA111 too (swapping them over didn't work at all) and with the same script, /etc/resolv.conf, etc).

Here's some more infos;

iwconfig;

wlan0 IEEE 802.11-b ESSID:"home" Nickname:"home"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:18:39:28:696
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm
Retry limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX Security mode:restricted
Link Quality=52/100 Signal level=-68 dBm Noise level=-89 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


ifconfig

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:712 (712.0 b) TX bytes:712 (712.0 b)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:09:5B:B2:E4:22
inet addr:192.168.0.162 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::209:5bff:feb2:e422/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:30 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:304 (304.0 b) TX bytes:1296 (1.2 KiB)


Last few lines of "dmesg";

ieee1394: exports duplicate symbol _csr1212_destroy_keyval (owned by kernel)
ohci1394: exports duplicate symbol ohci1394_unregister_iso_tasklet (owned by kernel)
NET: Registered protocol family 10
lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
hub 1-0:1.0: over-current change on port 2
usb 2-3: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2
usb 2-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
prism2usb_init: prism2_usb.o: 0.2.8 Loaded
prism2usb_init: dev_info is: prism2_usb
usbcore: registered new interface driver prism2_usb
ident: nic h/w: id=0x8026 1.0.0
ident: pri f/w: id=0x15 1.1.4
ident: sta f/w: id=0x1f 1.7.0
MFI:SUP:role=0x00:id=0x01:var=0x01:b/t=1/1
CFI:SUP:role=0x00:id=0x02:var=0x02:b/t=1/1
PRI:SUP:role=0x00:id=0x03:var=0x01:b/t=1/4
STA:SUP:role=0x00:id=0x04:var=0x01:b/t=1/12
PRI-CFI:ACT:role=0x01:id=0x02:var=0x02:b/t=1/1
STA-CFI:ACT:role=0x01:id=0x02:var=0x02:b/t=1/1
STA-MFI:ACT:role=0x01:id=0x01:var=0x01:b/t=1/1
Prism2 card SN: \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
linkstatus=CONNECTED
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
linkstatus=DISCONNECTED (unhandled)
linkstatus=CONNECTED


route (takes several seconds to complete; hangs at the last line for several seconds but then returns);


Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 wlan0
loopback * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
default 192.168.0.10 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0


If I were to do all of this under slackware 11, I'd have no problems; I could type "ping google.com" and get a response. I get no response whatsoever using slackware 12. Ping cannot "see" the internet.

Sometimes if I turned everything off - the router & the server, left it for a while and switched it back on I could get it to work under SW12. But it seemed to be extremely hit-and-miss. Using another PC at the same time with a Netgear MA111 and running SW11 had no problems at all.

Even more bizarre though is that sometimes - once in a blue moon - it will connect and I can ping (say) google.com . But if I remove the MA111 device, waited a moment and plugged it back in chances are it would fail again. It all seems to be *extremely* flaky. (SW11 never was!).

After googling I've been unable to find any answer to this, but I have been hearing that some are saying that SW12 seems to be quite buggy.

Can anyone think what's going on -- is there some big change 'tween Slackware 11 & 12 ?

ljones

[ljones]

Unfortunatly, I've not been able to fix this problem. In the end, I had to use ndiswrapper.

ljones