carolW

I can't have wireless with FC4 any more. however, I could use it many years. I have set the parameters in network manager applet. I can't ping nor access the router via http. I detec all networks in /sbin/iwlist scanning including mine however, I can't use any of them. my wireless card is PRO/wireless 2200BG. Moreover, dhcp option in network manager applet is inactive (grey) which oblige me to fix the IP and DNS address.

What else would you need as information to help?

thx

waterhead

Well, I am actually surprised that you ever had a working wireless in FC4!

Did you upgrade something before it stopped working? I am going to give you the standard reply, on reading this post and giving the needed info.

Wireless Setup - Start Here

Since FC4 is rather old, I don't know how much help I can give. Make sure that you post your kernel version, and the full output of the dmesg command.

I would really recommend installing a newer version of Linux. Wireless support has come a long way since FC4.

__________________
Paul

Please do not PM me with requests for help. I will not reply.

carolW

Thanks Paul for your reply.

I tried to install first FC10 live. When I booted FC10 from CD and before automatic logging I already got the following message:
ipw2200 failed to send: system_config already sending a command

Then when I logged, I noticed that I can't access to internet either via ethernet or wireless. I get the following message when try to determine IP address via dhcp:

determining IP information for eth1: dhclient (2949) is already running-existing. this version of ISC dhcp is based on the release available on ftp.isc.org. features have been added and other changes have been made to the base software release in order to make it work better with distribution.
exiting, failed.

I would appreciate any help

thanks,

waterhead

I still need the info that I mentioned in my previous post. I would especially like to see the full output of the dmesg command. You can pipe it to a text file, if needed.
The file would then be found in your home folder.

You could try bringing the wireless down, and then restarting it. You may need root privileges, using su.
Your wireless may be named differently (eth1 instead of wlan0). Please post the output of these commands too.

__________________
Paul

Please do not PM me with requests for help. I will not reply.

waterhead

After looking into the error message, I have some suggestions.

It appears to be a problem with that specific wireless card/wireless driver. It is reported that it constantly scans for available Access Points (AP). This can cause some problems.

Also, do you have a wireless connection that has a hidden ESSID (name)? Try unhiding it, just to see if the errors stop. I know that this isn't a real solution, because the world is full of hidden ESSIDs.

Another method to try, is to disable the automatic scanning for that card. This can be done by adding a line to the cards /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<card> file. The name of the file depends on the name given to the connection by the system. First, make sure that you are editing the correct file. Now add a line to it with this command. I will use eth1 as the connection, yours may be different. Also do this with root permissions (su).
This will add "WIRELESS_AP_SCANMODE=2" to the bottom of that file. You should now restart the wireless. I would normally recommend rebooting, but with a LiveCD, this would just wipe out your changes. So instead, manually bring the wireless down, then remove the driver module. Then you need to reload the module and restart the wireless. Do this with root privileges too.
Now try to connect using NetworkManager. It is the icon (usually) found next to the Date/Time. If this seems to work. You will need to do a permanent install before the changes can be made permanent.

There is another possible fix. I found this info here:
ipw2200: Failed to send SYSTEM_CONFIG: Already sending a command

__________________
Paul

Please do not PM me with requests for help. I will not reply.

carolW

Thanks for your reply.

Please find the outputs of the commands that you asked. I ran the commands in FC4. I did the solution that you suggested for automatic scanning in FC4 and it didn't work. I am going to do the rest in FC10 to see if they work.

$ /sbin/ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:F0:BA:C6:BB
inet6 addr: fe80::212:f0ff:feba:c6bb/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:9 errors:0 dropped:62 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x4000 Memory:c8400000-c8400fff

eth0:1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:F0:BA:C6:BB
inet addr:192.168.1.33 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x4000 Memory:c8400000-c8400fff

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:14:38:15:72:20
inet6 addr: fe80::214:38ff:fe15:7220/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:15970 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:12825 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:7037027 (6.7 MiB) TX bytes:1766715 (1.6 MiB)
Interrupt:10

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:2054 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2054 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2411489 (2.2 MiB) TX bytes:2411489 (2.2 MiB)

/sbin/iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 unassociated ESSID:"net" Nickname:"localhost"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=0 kb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr: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:62 Missed beacon:0

eth1 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

cipsec0 no wireless extensions.

Attached Files

dmesg.txt.gz (7.1 KB, 1 views)

carolW

Regarding the hiden ESSID, I checked and i saw that I have a second ESSID (set via Enable Multiple Wireless IDs). The second was set because the first ESSID protected by wpa-psk has a character key. So in order to set the key in hexa in network manager , I set a 2nd key with wep-automatic security, thinking that FC could access more easily to wep than wpa-psk. I could disable the second but then, how to set the key is hex? How to know if the ESSID is hidden? IF it doesn't appear in iwlist and iwconfig, so it is hidden? If it is the case, the second ESSID is hidden since it doesn't come up in any list.

waterhead

A ESSID is hidden by the wireless router or AP, not the PC that connects to it. I do see two wireless connetions with the same name. You may need to delete both of them and start fresh.

To connect to a WPA encrypted network with FC4, you need to use and configure wpa_supplicant. It is kind of a PITA to use, and you can't connect to networks on the fly. This is one reason that I recommend upgrading. NetworkManager is much improved since FC4, and does the whole job.

There is a program similar to NetworkManager, that you may be able to install. It is called Wicd.

wicd - home
SourceForge.net: wicd: Files
Wicd on FC9 - Wicd Wiki
You will need to compile it from source. The Fedora instructions don't have the current version listed in the instructions.

__________________
Paul

Please do not PM me with requests for help. I will not reply.

carolW

I agree that I should upgrade fedora and that's why I started by installing live FC10. As you said, with FC10 I shouldn't have problems with wireless connection. But the problem is that I can even not access to ethernet in live FC10. in network manager, in device tab, the ethernet device is configured but I can't get connected to the web sites. I could ping my router, ping a unix server (that I have access), and ssh the same server. But no access to web. I didn't set any thing for 802.1 security nor dhcp client ID for ethernet in network manager in case I should have.

For wireless, I can see all wireless networks, however, when i wanted to install the device (configure in network manager), I could set the parameters but when pushing on apply button at the end, I got the message "adding connection failed, name of the registered plugings support add....". Note that I couldn't configure either for my network (secured) nor for any other unsecured network.

How access to internet could be fixed under live FC10? Note that I couldn't do any of your suggestion under live FC10. it is obvious that since I couldn't configure wireless device, I couldn't change ifcfg_eth1 which doesn't exist.

Othewise, I have no problem with ethernet under FC4. I could access a non-secured wireless network but not mine (secured). So instead of investing to install wpa-supplicant, I thought that it would be better to focus on FC10 installation which solves the problem to access secured wireless.

waterhead

That is why I suggested installing Wicd, on your FC4 install. It looks like there is a problem involving your wireless, so the problem will exist no matter what you try.

But, you could try a distro other than Fedora, just to see.

Edit: When you tried Fedora 10 (no "Core" anymore), did it have the correct firmware? You would need to check on this.

__________________
Paul

Please do not PM me with requests for help. I will not reply.