No Internet connection even though YaST appears to recognize network cards

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06-19-2008
LordTorgamus

No Internet connection even though YaST appears to recognize network cards

Hi I'm a newbie (to both Linux in general and Internet forums), so if this isn't the right place for this question, sorry/please point me elsewhere. I've tried a few times over the past year to get an Internet connection set up on a SuSE 10.1 laptop with no success using madwifi drivers for the wireless card. This time I'm determined to see it through but can't find any answers on the Internet that solve my issue.

My wireless card is an Atheros AR5006X built into a Fujitsu A3040 laptop, and it works fine on Windows XP. My ethernet card (same machine) is a Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5751M, which also works fine in XP. I just looked in YaST2 and as far as I can tell, it's happy with both cards and there are no other cards. However, when I try to get online, I get a box that says "NetworkManager is Connecting" for a while and eventually disappears with no connection. I connect using a Belkin wireless router and Linksys cable modem that are working fine for multiple XP machines.

Any help would be appreciated, please let me know what other information you need. Thank you!
06-20-2008
waterhead

You need to add firmware, that is loaded when the card is initialized. Firmware is usually proprietary, and not included in "free" distributions.

Please read through this thread, and then post the output of the commands in this thread.
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/wir...tml#post589924

Pay close attention to the output of dmesg, as it will tell you if it is looking for firmware.
06-20-2008
LordTorgamus

Thanks waterhead. I have checked through the links you posted again, did what they said (the parts I understood, anyways), and still no luck. I'm now suspecting my router, because Internet works fine when I skip the router and plug directly into the cable modem. Not sure if that helps you. Things I failed to mention in the first post:

Location of madwifi issue: Everything before "scanning for access points" goes alright, but wlanconfig ath0 list scan has no results, and neither does iwlist ath0 scan.

Location of ndiswrapper issue: Appears to install okay, but ndiswrapper -l has no results and never completes.

The forum had a problem with the outputs you asked for; it thought some parts were images for some reason, so I put them online at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~kychang/waterhead2.txt. I didn't know what parts were relevant, so they're extremely long, sorry!
06-20-2008
waterhead

I misunderstood something at first. I thought that the Broadcom card was a wireless, as those are troublesome. The LAN cards usually configure themselves.

So, this is what you have (as you already know):

Code:

06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 21) 08:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006X 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

The driver for the wireless is this

Code:

ath_pci 93224 0

And the driver for the LAN card is this:

Code:

tg3 97028 0

I'm not seeing error messages in the dmesg output, unless they didn't get copied. There are a lot of messages concerning the eth0 connection. This would be the Broadcom LAN card. Is it working?

I downloaded the tg3 source from broadcom:
Broadcom Corporation - Download NetXtreme Desktop Drivers

There is a README file that says you should find these outputs in dmesg:

Code:

Driver signon: ------------- tg3.c:v3.85l (March 4, 2008) NIC detected: ------------ eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95704A6) rev 2003 PHY(5704)] (PCIX:100MHz:64-bit) 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet 00:10:18:04:3f:36 eth0: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] WireSpeed[1] TSOcap[1] eth0: dma_rwctrl[769f4000] dma_mask[64-bit] Link up and speed indication: ---------------------------- tg3: eth0: Link is up at 1000 Mbps, full duplex. tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX. Link down indication: -------------------- tg3: eth0: Link is down.

Post the outputs of these commands:
ifconfig
iwconfig

I think that the wireless should work, have you tried to configure it? I always used NetworkManager to control the network cards, but I'm not familiar with the Atheros cards. Also, you cannot use NDISwrapper if the ath_pci module is loaded, neither driver module will work then.
06-20-2008
LordTorgamus

I ran dmesg again after a reboot. The output of dmesg, iwconfig and ifconfig are at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~kychang/waterhead3.txt. I'm not sure why the forum thinks my output is images....

When the Broadcom LAN card is plugged into the router, I get no connection (no websites or even ping) regardless of whether the computer says I'm connected. When the same card is plugged directly into the cable modem, I can use the Internet fine (I'm doing it now). The wireless doesn't work no matter how I try to configure it; it's possible that some of the solutions I've tried are conflicting with each other, as you noted, but I'm not sure how to determine if that's the case.

After this posts, I will try to plug Broadcom card back into router and see what happens.

Also, not sure if this is relevant, but I have the same problem a lot of people seem to have with USB devices. That is, if it's plugged in at boot time, it gets power, but if it's plugged in after everything's already up and running, it's dead.
06-20-2008
LordTorgamus

Okay, I just put the router between the cable modem and the Linux machine again. The Linux machine doesn't get Internet anymore, from either the Broadcom LAN or the Atheros wireless, but my other machine (running XP) is connecting fine on wireless.

Here is dmesg from before I disconnected the direct modem/Broadcom link:
linux:/home/kevin # dmesg | grep tg3
tg3.c:v3.49 (Feb 2, 2006)
tg3: eth0: Link is up at 100Mbps, full duplex.
tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
tg3: eth0: Link is down.
tg3: eth0: Link is up at 100Mbps, full duplex.
tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.

Here is dmesg after I made the router part of the puzzle again:
linux:/home/kevin # dmesg | grep tg3
tg3.c:v3.49 (Feb 2, 2006)
tg3: eth0: Link is up at 100Mbps, full duplex.
tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
tg3: eth0: Link is down.
tg3: eth0: Link is up at 100Mbps, full duplex.
tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
tg3: eth0: Link is down.
tg3: eth0: Link is up at 100Mbps, full duplex.
tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.
tg3: eth0: Link is down.
tg3: eth0: Link is up at 100Mbps, full duplex.
tg3: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX.

For good measure, a ping from after I put the router back:
linux:/home/kevin # ping bbc.co.uk
ping: unknown host bbc.co.uk
06-20-2008
waterhead

Have you configured the LAN card in YaST? You should tell it to get it's IP address via DHCP. You then need to tell it where to find it, that would be the IP address of the router. It is sometimes called the default gateway, I don't recall what SuSE calls it, but there should be a place to enter this info.

Do the same for the wireless (ath0). I used to use SuSE 10.2, and on the first page for configuring a network card, there is the option on how to control the card. You can use the traditional method, using command line ifup/ifdown, or NetworkManager. On my laptop with Broadcom LAN and wireless, I use NetworkManager. There will be an icon in the system tray. When you click on it, it will show the available networks. Click on the network to connect to it, and if a password is needed it will request one.

If you want to try the command line method, the iwconfig command can be appended with options. To see a list of common options, enter this:

Code:

iwconfig --help

That command gives me this:

Code:

$ iwconfig --help Usage: iwconfig [interface] interface essid {NNN|any|on|off} interface mode {managed|ad-hoc|master|...} interface freq N.NNN[k|M|G] interface channel N interface bit {N[k|M|G]|auto|fixed} interface rate {N[k|M|G]|auto|fixed} interface enc {NNNN-NNNN|off} interface key {NNNN-NNNN|off} interface power {period N|timeout N|saving N|off} interface nickname NNN interface nwid {NN|on|off} interface ap {N|off|auto} interface txpower {NmW|NdBm|off|auto} interface sens N interface retry {limit N|lifetime N} interface rts {N|auto|fixed|off} interface frag {N|auto|fixed|off} interface modulation {11g|11a|CCK|OFDMg|...} interface commit Check man pages for more details.

To set it to a network called lordtorgamus, you would enter this:

Code:

iwconfig ath0 essid lordtorgamus

Other things that you would want to set are the mode (usually managed), and the key(password):

Code:

iwconfig ath0 mode managed iwconfig ath0 key <password>

After making changes, you may need to stop and restart the wireless:

Code:

ifdown ath0 ifup ath0

Then enter just iwconfig to see if the changes are listed.

As for posting files, I don't click on anything in the header. When you want to post something other than regular text, I start and end the section using the vB codes that are encased in brackets. To post something that can be easily copied by a reader, I start with the code header, encased in brackets [ ], end it with /code also encased in brackets. Read this for more info:
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/misc.php?do=bbcode
06-21-2008
LordTorgamus

Both the wireless (Atheros) and LAN (Broadcom) are already configured the way you said. I just re-set them that way, and still neither one functions. FYI, I checked, and SuSE, at least v10.1, does use the term "Default Gateway."

I also tried using the command line method you explained. Things seem okay up to and including ifdown, but when I try ifup I get the following:

"Starting DHCP Client Daemon on ath0... . . . . . no IP address yet... backgrounding.
Warning: Could not set up default route via interface
Command ip route replace to default via 192.168.2.1 returned:
. RTNETLINK answers: Network is unreachable
Configuration line: default 192.168.2.1 - -
This needs NOT to be AN ERROR if you set up multiple interfaces.
See man 5 routes how to avoid this warning."

I'm not sure what that last line means. 192.168.2.1 is the default gateway I gave YaST, and I've confirmed that it is my router's IP.
06-21-2008
waterhead

I'm not sure what that last line means either, but I did find this:
5:routes - Linux Man Pages Manual Documentation for Linux / Solaris / UNIX / BSD
06-21-2008
LordTorgamus

Interesting, even though it's mostly over my head. Does this still seem like a firmware problem, or is it more like something else now, or maybe just anomalous behavior that doesn't have a solution?

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