Wifi - so close....

[scp02]

Hi,

I'm new to Linux but am giving Debian a bash on an otherwise scrap laptop. I've done my best setting up a wifi PCMCIA card but have hit a wall: dhclient listens but hears nothing then goes to sleep, even withan unencrypted network. Everything seems in place, no errors, and the driver (through ndiswrapper & WPA_Supplicant) is the one the card worked with in XP.

Files attached and all advice gratefully received.

Many thanks.

[scp02]

Sorry, that should have read "DHCPDISCOVER" on WLAN0 listens but finds nothing.

[reed9]

Are you just using the command line to connect? Can you post the contents of /etc/network/interfaces?

NetworkConfiguration - Debian Wiki

I would recommend trying WICD to manage your connections.

You might also try using the linux driver, though it doesn't appear to support WPA encryption.

[scp02]

Hi,
Thanks for coming back to me. Yes, I've only got the command line interface to work with but will look for WICD. WPA is essential for my network but having worked on this a bit more I can now associate to an unprotected network, so I think it's a problem with wpa_supplicant. I've outputted the file you asked about below and also some command line stuff that may give a clue what goes wrong when it attempts to associate with my WPA network (SSID "7ARS").

[scp02]

scp@armada:~$ sudo wpa_supplicant -D wext -i wlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
ioctl[SIOCSIWPMKSA]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCSIWPMKSA]: Invalid argument
CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
Trying to associate with 00:0d:72:f7:ec:21 (SSID='7ARS' freq=2422 MHz)
Associated with 00:0d:72:f7:ec:21
CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument
WPA: EAPOL-Key Replay Counter did not increase - dropping packet
Associated with 00:0d:72:f7:ec:21
CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
pre-up /sbin/wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dndiswrapper -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
post-down killall -q wpa_supplicant

[reed9]

I very rarely have used wpa_supplicant as a standalone. From what you posted, you need a space between the -c and the /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

This is what has worked for me in the past:

wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

For Debian based systems, there are two options for an ncurses based wireless manager, that make this whole thing much easier.

Ceni
which is most easily installed using the smxi scripts, and WICD, as I mentioned before.

The caveat with WICD is that the ncurses interface is only available beginning the the 1.6 release, and Debian only has 1.5.9 in the backports, I believe. So you would need to compile it from source. I think WICD is the better network manager, but Ceni isn't bad.

[scp02]

Thanks for that. I'll try a different build with WICD and see how it goes.