Wireless Help for Newbie

Alright,
I did a little more digging and found the following in the forums

I did the above and got

iwconfig
kelly@1[~]$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

ath0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:20 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/94 Signal level=-95 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

So it looks like my card is on ath0. Does anybody know the few manual commands that I need to get this working? If you do please post them in a very simple step by step manor.

I really appreciate the help all.

Thx

OK,
I am slowly but surely finding all of the stuff that does not work. I have been searching the forums for info and came across this.

I typed at the root

ifup ath0

and recieved

Additional info. Linksys g router. no security of any kind, open network.

I am beyond any clue as to what I am doing or need to do. Any and all help appreciated.

Thx

I found some additional commands to try. No luck.

I checked an old desktop that is running windows and it is connected to the wireless g network, no problems.

Any ideas, anyone? Scrap the wireless card and set up the USB? If so, how? Am I just a short put from getting the wireless card to work? If so, how?

Any and all help is appreciated,
Thx

i can tell that you have been enjoying discovering solutions on your own, but perhaps you would really like to close this issue now.

What are the settings on your router? Particularly the frequency/channel and the ESSID. The wireless card and the router must agree on these points. Also keep the security (WEP key, etc.) off for now. Some people confuse frequency and channel. Maybe this will help. Look at the figure at the bottom of this page.

http://www.hyperlinktech.com/web/band_pass_filters.php

you can also set all this up with wifi-radar which can be downloaded from the repositories via apt-get or synaptic.

The channel is 6, the ESSID is linksys. I have no other internet access with this old laptop until I get the wireless working.
I really appreciate the help, I am stuck.

Thx

Hey Real Newby...

Still consider myself a newby, but since you're not getting much help, thought I'd give a stab at it.

Not sure what version of Mepis you're using, but you need to run mutilities or Mepis Network if you are using 6.0 or higher. Not at my Linux box now, so this is from memory.

In the Mepis network utility, you need to set the ath0 tab to start on system startup, and set the other tabs not to start like wlan0 and eth0 etc. You do this one tab at a time and click apply on each one. Then in the Wirelss tab I believe it is called, is a place to put in your essid (linksys) and your frequency (2.437). This is where the link above comes in from light9 (good find by the way light9). From that chart channel 1 = 2.412 amd channel 6 = 2.437

Above in your second post it shows essid = "" or blank, and frequency = 2.412 which is channel 1. You need it to be channel 6 so set it to 2.437 and setthe essid to linksys. Then apply the changes and reboot.

Hope this helps. Some more experienced may join in soon. I'd keep trying with this atheros card. By the way I have a Netgear atheros pcmcia card in my laptop that works with a linksys router. One thing I find is sometimes I have to reset the router by powering it off for about 3 seconds and power it back on, and all works fine. I may have to do this about once a week or so. The thing is the first time I tried to get my card working, I was exhausting all attempts to no avail, but as soon as I did the power down/up thing it worked, and has worked ever since with every version of mepis I use. So I'd try recycling the power and try my suggestions then.

regards,

...topcat

Thanks for the help Topcat,

Still does not work.In MEPIS Utilities>Network Interfaces>Status tab next to ath0 it says "ath0:can't connect".

Do I need to do this from the command line interface? Should I junk the Proxim card and use the USB wireless?

Thx

Does anyone have any ideas. I am stuck!

Thx

First of all, are you sure your Linksys router is setup with the ESSID of Linksys? I noticed you're setting it that way via IWCONFIG. You can also set it via the MEPIS utilities. In many cases (depending on the wireless card and driver), you don't even need to set it via iwconfig (but, with some cards, I need to).

Note that different versions of MEPIS have different setup screens. Depending on the version you're using, you may have to setup your network in more than one place to get everything working.

You can log into your Linksys router (from a PC that has a connection to it) by going to this address in a browser (unless you changed it from it's defaults). That way, you can verify how your router is setup:

http://192.168.1.1/

You'll need to know the username and password you setup for it originally to get to the setup screens.

I'm using a Linksys WRT54G with no issues with 3 different wireless cards.

How about DHCP? They're normally setup for DHCP by default. Did you change it for any reason?

What version of SimplyMEPIS? You may want to try the new 6.0-4 Beta 3. You'll find the screens to configure Wireless under KMenu>Internet and Network>MEPIS Network. It's got some new features (including the ability to setup cards appearing as ra0 and rausb0 that weren't in previous releases). ath0 is also supported (although it was supported in some of the previous releases, too). Here's the press release on the new beta:

http://www.mepis.org/node/12316

Jim C.

Your post of 1/12 in the am shows what may be the connection problem. I am going to re-play a part of it here.

Mode:Managed Frequency:11 MHz Access Point: 00:0C:F6:25:09:3C
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off

It looks like the frequency is set to 11 MHz to match the setting on the router. But I suspect that you want channel 11 which would be 2.462 MHz. Try this change:

iwconfig 2.462

I think you had a good idea here. How can we change the wrong address for the correct one that Mepis will use.

Looking at the forums and tinkering here, it seems that we just need to take these cards that almost work and rename them after the Wlan.

Ever get this working?

I think that you are on to something here. I just checked and found this

Questions
1) I am actually using 802.11B wireless (thought I had upgraded to G and have not)-does this matter to the above settings?
2)The name of my network is linksys-sometimes it appears as a captial L and others not-does this matter
3)I am using channel 6-2.442 GHZ**current setting is 2.437 GHZ.-how do I make the change? I tried the iwconfig 2.442 and as you can see above, it did not work.

I think that we are really close. Can any body answer the questions above??

As always,
Thx

Well...

For what it is worth, I answered #3 myself. I went into Mutilties and changed the frequency

Still dosen't work. Anybody have any ideas?

Thx

hey again Real Newby...

Once again, still a newby myself, but in regards to b or g router/adapter, I believe that does not mater. G is newer and faster, but you should be able to mix and match without an issue. More in the know may correct me if I'm wrong.

I believe caps do matter in essid, so try both.

In regards to frequency, yes you can change in mutilities as I described above and as you found out. One note is when you make changes in mutilities you must apply each change before changing tabs, or you changes are lost. To be sure after making all your changes, you can close and reload mutilities and check each tab to see if they are right. So within mutilities, you should be able to also change the essid and stop ath0 and start ath0. Have you tried that.

You could also try changing your router ssid & channel if you are not sure what they are (caps or not).

Hopefully a network guru will be able to help soon. Have you tried going to the mepislovers.com forum and asking for help? If not and you'd like to, just create a post over there that ask for wireless networking help and link back to this post here for details.

regards,

...topcat

p.s. Waiting for my Trendnet TEW-443PI pci card to arrive as I could not get my D-Link DWLG-122 usb to work, so good luck.