wireless on FC6

[mazer]

Hi folks,

I have problems to get my wireless card running on Fedora Core 6 (FC6). Since last sunday, I have tried different things. But all what I have found in the web could not really help me.
Here is my configuration:
Laptop: Hp Pavilloon N5450 (pretty old thing)
Wireless Card: Belkin bla bla with atheros chip, which should be supported by the madwifi
driver from madwifi.org (by the way ethernet is working perfectly).
OS: FC6 with newest kernel (2.6.20-1.2962.fc6).
Driver: madwifi kernel module from livna.

Installation:
(First, I tried the entire setup under FC5. However, I have read in a forum that the FC5 madwifi driver from livna has a bug and is not working correctly under FC5. Therefore, I thought that I should update my computer. That worked very well. Now I have FC6 running, but there is still the same problem.)
- ath0 station interface created by
"wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmod sta"
- iwconfig outputs:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
lo no wireless extensions.

wifi0 no wireless extensions.

ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"UAPublic" Nickname:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:5.18 GHz Access Point: 00:19:07:04:74:7C
Bit Rate: kb/s Tx-Power:15 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry: off RTS thr: off Fragment thr: off
Encryption key: off
Power Management: off
Link Quality=0/94 Signal level=-96 dBm Noise level=-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:468207 Rx invalid crypt: 0 Rx invalid frag: 0
Tx excessive retries: 0 Invalid misc: 0 Missed beacon: 0

eth0 no wireless extensions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- you can see from this output that I have assigned an essid and an ap to my wireless
device ath0 with
iwconfig ath0 essid "UAPublic" ap ....
- when I start however
dhclient ath0
I get the output
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/ath0/~
Sending on LPF/ath0/~
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 16
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Somehow I do not receive an ip address from the router?
Why is that?

Thanks in advance,
mazer

[Dapper Dan]

Not sure although I had a similar problem once with a Ralink card in CentOS. Have you tried assigning it a static IP to see if the router would let you on that way? That might at least help narrow down what the issue(s) might be if that gets you connected.

[mazer]

Not sure although I had a similar problem once with a Ralink card in CentOS. Have you tried assigning it a static IP to see if the router would let you on that way? That might at least help narrow down what the issue(s) might be if that gets you connected.

Thanks a lot for your prompt reply. I just wanted to assign a static ip and I inserted the
wireless card in a different PCMCIA slot. Do you know what happened????? It is working
now. How wired. That is my first (used) laptop. Is this pcmcia slot broken or is it necessary to plug the card in a certain slot??

Thanks,
mazer

[Dapper Dan]

I'll be honest, I didn't pay attention that is was a pcmcia card. Yes... I've seen this. You sometimes have to pull the card out, wait a few seconds and re-insert it for the new configuration to get read and operational. I'm glad to see it's working for you! Atheros and Madwifi is the best for Linux in my opinion.

[mazer]

I'll be honest, I didn't pay attention that is was a pcmcia card. Yes... I've seen this. You sometimes have to pull the card out, wait a few seconds and re-insert it for the new configuration to get read and operational. I'm glad to see it's working for you! Atheros and Madwifi is the best for Linux in my opinion.

You are right. I have just to remove it and re-insert it than it is working. And for that I have wasted 3 days. This Gnome-NetworkManger is however still bothering me. I do not
have a feeling how this thing works. I guess I will just go with the command line.

Thanks again,
Mazer