Can't connect to network with Wireless Lan Using OPENSUSE Linux 10.3RC1

[jleraj]

Dear Friends

As suggessted by some of our pals, I have installed Open Suse 10.3RC1. Now i can connect ot internet through the lan cable. Also I can ping other nodes in my windows XP workgroup. But i can not access their drives (like c,d,e). I used smbclient but it said Bad Network Name.

Also I can not connect to the lan using my WLAN. It is from BroadComm and the adapter name is displayed correctly in the list. But in the network devices list only the ethernet adapter is shown.

Please help me to connect to the windows XP workgroup


Regards

Edward

[bigtomrodney]

You can install ndiswrapper and install the windows driver for your wlan card. SUSE have become less generous with some of their wlan drivers over some legal concerns - some native wlan drivers such as madwifi(atheros) and broadcom use a binary blob. You may also be able to install the native broadcom driver but results are varied, some people find they are stuck at 11Mbps.

[jleraj]

Dear Sir

As you said, i tried to install the win xp driver using ndiswrapper -i setup.ini (there is no .inf file). But this is what i got.

installing setup.ini ...
couldn't find SourceDisksFiles section - continuing anyway...
couldn't get manufacturer section - installation may be incomplete

When i issued the cmd ndiswrapper -l, i got

setup.ini : invalid driver!

Please help

Regards


Edward

[bigtomrodney]

Is there a setup *.exe file? If that is the case you can either run it on a windows system to extract the .sys and .inf file or you can download a similar driver for the card. Many of these cards share a chipset so there will be various drivers from various vendors that will work.

[waterhead]

Sometimes you can extract files from a compressed .exe file with the cabextract command. If that doesn't work, you can also try to "install" it to a folder with wine. This should give you the files that you need for the Linux installation.

If neither of these work, you will have to either get the files from a windows installation, or use a different windows driver. As bigtomrodney said, many makers use the same wireless chipsets. You can search the NDISWrapper supported card pages for cards with the same chipset, and try their drivers.

NDISwrapper Supported Cards: NDISwrapper

[jleraj]

Thanks pals

With your help I have installed the wireless card using ndiswrapper and the WLAN indicator light is on. But now i am facing the next problem. I have configured the WLAN (device name eth0) using iwconfig. But, when i execute the iwconfig command the details shown is given below.

IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

But, when I execute the command iwlist eth0 scanning i get the below said details. These are the correct details about my access point.

iwlist eth0 scanning
eth0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:18:02:8E:16:FA
ESSID:"RT2561_6"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:37/100 Signal level:-72 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Encryption key:off
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:bcn_int=100
Extra:atim=0

Even after using iwconfig commit, the iwconfig shows only the old details. I don't know how to make iwconfig accept the changes. Also when i use the command lhclient eth0 the following details are returned, whereas i get answer from server when i use the device eth1 (which is ethernet card working through lan cable).

dhclient eth0

Listening on LPF/eth0/00:1a:73:41:3b:0b
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:1a:73:41:3b:0b
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 2
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 1
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

Please help

Edward

[waterhead]

It sounds like it is not connecting to the DHCP server. What are you using for your network? A router, or a PC server?.

This could also be a firewall problem. You could turn off all firewalls, in Linux and Windows, and see if it changes things.

Another thing to try, is to use wpa_supplicant. You put all of the info needed to connect to your LAN into a config file.

[jleraj]

Dear Paul

Thanks for the suggstn. I use router. But, now i am able to connect thro' wireless. I have manually mentioned the essid & other parameters of the router in a configuration file @ /etc/sysconfig (i can't recall the file name because i did that soon after posting my last request. Probably the name should be wireless.<some extension>.

Now the problem is resolved. Thanks to all and the Linuxforum for helping me a newbie like me. I think i will be back (Sounds like Terminator-2...?) soon with a new question

Regards

Edward