Another Atheros/madwifi issue

[vuserv]

I've read a lot of threads about this both here and on the OpenSuse site but just can't get over what should be a low hurdle.

I can't seem to get my wireless started from a user visual perspective. Meaning, I can't seem to detect any wireless networks. I turn it on and though I get a light on my laptop, I don't see any indication on the taskbar like I do when I plug in an Ethernet cable.

I loaded the madwifi and all seems to have gone fine. Though I don't know what all should be there, my lsmod shows ath_pci, ath_hal, wlan_scan_sta, wlan and ath_rate_sample. Those all seem to be related based on what's under 'Used by'.

One potential problem, I have both a ath0 and a wifi0 in my ifconfig printout and in my YaST2 hardware information under Device Names.

In the ifconfig the ath0 has a good looking MAC address. The wifi0 has the same MAC as the ath0 but then an addition 10 sets of -00-. The wifi0 shows RX/TX packet activity but the ath0 doesn't.

Under Network Devices / Network Card I show one wireless device but its device name is wlan-ath0. I had another wifi before (prior to and after installing madwifi drivers) but I deleted it once I had installed the drivers and the Atheros adapter showed up. I had something similar happen with my Ethernet, meaning I had my full description Ethernet controller and a plain vanilla Ethernet controller. Neither worked at first but after a few tweaks and deleting the plain entry all began to work fine. I assume there must be something I need to do to get rid of the wifi0 info.

Once I get it going, should I see some form of notification on my taskbar/panel that my wireless is active or connected like I do for Ethernet or does it share the same indicator?

I'm running OpenSuse 10.3 2.6.22.17-0.1-default on a Benq S32W 2.0 GHz Core 2 duo 64 bit w/2GB RAM.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions on what to try or look for.

V

[waterhead]

In YaST, go to the network cards section. Make sure you have Network Manager selected to handle the cards.

Edit the wireless card and enter ath_pci in the driver (module) section. Reboot and see if it is any better.

[vuserv]

Hello waterhead,

Forgive my noobness. In YaST I open Network Cards and I have three entries, Ethernet, Bluetooth and the Atheros Wireless Adapter. In the Global Options tab, User Controlled with NetworkManager is (already was) selected.

Please let me know what the NetworkManager does and if I need to interact with it. I thought I read that allows the indicator on the taskbar somewhere but I can't recall for sure.

Next you suggest I edit the card and enter ath_pci in the driver section. I Module Name is the equivalent of driver, then it's already set that way.

One thing of note is that in the General tab of the wireless card under Firewall Zone it stays with No Zone, All Traffic Blocked. Even when I change it to External Zone it always goes back to that. The Ethernet card stays on External Zone. Within the firewall settings they're both the same. I did try turning the firewall off but nothing.

Again, I just never seem to get anything to interact with suggesting the wireless is functioning and looking for a network.

Does anyone else that has a wireless connection working have two entries in their ifconfig output? I may be wrong but seem to think I need to get rid of the wifi0 and just have the ath0. The wifi0 entry is actively exchanging packets.

Thanks again,

V

[waterhead]

Network Manager (or KNetworkManager) is a GUI for handleing network connections. It may not be enable to start automatically, so check that in YaST too. I'm not booted into Suse right now, so I can't tell you the exact place in Yast.

In Fedora 8, which I am currently using, I am showing two entries, a wlan0 and a wmmaster0. The wmmaster0 has the extra zeros that you mentioned.

I am using a Broadcom wireless with the native b43 driver.

P.S. I think you need to tell it which mode you want it to run as. I don't remember the options, but mine is "managed".

[vuserv]

I've got NetworkManager loaded. That's the small RJ45 icon in the taskbar that indicates the status of my Ethernet connection. It doesn't have much to say about my wireless though.

I'm thinking about removing everything wireless and going through the madwifi install again. Problem is I won't know if I've taken everything out. Any pointers where I need to look to ensure I remove everything? Thanks,

V

[vuserv]

Which entry is carrying your packets, wlan0 or wmmaster0?

[waterhead]

Right click on the Network Manager icon in the taskbar. There should be a check box to enable wireless, make sure it is checked.

Here are the wireless modes, copied from the iwconfig man pages:

mode - Set the operating mode of the device, which depends on the network topology. The mode can be:

Ad-Hoc (network composed of only one cell and without Access Point)
Managed (node connects to a network composed of many Access Points, with roaming)
Master (the node is the synchronisation master or acts as an Access Point)
Repeater (the node forwards packets between other wireless nodes)
Secondary (the node acts as a backup master/repeater)
Monitor (the node is not associated with any cell and passively monitor all packets on the frequency) or
Auto

Not all of these modes are supported on every card. I use managed to connect to an Access Point, with WPA encryption.

My driver seems to support the master mode, but I don't use it that way. I use the wlan0 for the connection.

[vuserv]

Wow, what a fool I am. I usually start off right clicking things to see what happens. In this case, I clicked on the network manager icon but saw no options other than the Ethernet connection. Once I right clicked, there were my wireless options. I don't know why it didn't remember my wpa configuration, but once I put it in again manually it connected.

Should my laptop wireless switch/button work? At first I had General tab of my Network Card Setup screen under Activate device set to At Boot Time. Then I changed it to Manually. Either way, my switch/button makes no difference. It looks like I have to enable/disable the device. On top of that, if it's disabled, upon enabling it, I have to reconfigure my settings again, passphrase etc.

Please tell me I've missed something else... At the end of the day, it's working, which gives me additional options to learn with it while on the road.

Thanks for your time,

V

[waterhead]

I can't help with the specifics of Atheros wireless hardware, as I never used Atheros. I have noticed that Network Manager doesn't seem to use wpa_supplicant. I think that wpa_supplicant comes into play if you choose the "traditional" method of ifup/ifdown to control the wireless.

As for saving the connection info, I have it setup on three distros, and each is slightly different.

On Suse 10.2 and Fedora Core 7 it uses KWallet to store the information. The wallet itself has a password needed to open it. Then all of the passwords it holds are available.

In Fedora 8, it uses something called Keyring Manager. It is similar to KWallet, as I use a password to run it initially.