wifi pcmcia hard time

PoltheMol · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

I have here a HP Omnibook 6000 with a Kobishi wificard (using the Prism GT / Prism Duette chipsetthingie) and I just can't manage to get it live on the network with it.

So it is compiled in the kernel (like all those manuals on this forum tell me), I have emerged all the needed tools. Lspci show nicely my wificard, and dmesg | grep prism tells the drivers are loaded succesful. iwconfig and ifconfig let me see the card also, I can even assign it an ip. The Link led starts flashing then for a few seconds.

But I just can't seem to get a real activity over it

I have tried it with assigning it a static ip, but as soon as i try to ping whatsoever i get a network unreachable-error. My accesspoints doesn't notice the card also.

So my last hope is with you guys, anyone has an idea how to get the bugger to work

Thnx in advance

edit:

using the latest 2.6.11 kernel
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Kruegi · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 7:33 am Post subject:

What does "iwconfig" return?

Thomas

vmatherly · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 3:54 pm Post subject:

Are you using WEP? I had issues using WEP at first.
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PoltheMol · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"wifi"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:11:D8:60:56:08
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power=31 dBm Sensitivity=20/200
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key: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:0 Missed beacon:0

it seems like it does pick over the ESSID from the xspoint (dunno for sure, it's my first go with wifi)
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PoltheMol · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

nope not using any security whatsoever. I first wanted to get it up and running before putting any time in securing it. But maybe it could help if i'd use a wepkey ? :/ Btw now i found some more out: if i try dhcpcd eth1, it puts the card in not ready

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vmatherly · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 4:20 pm Post subject: wifi pcmcia hard time

have you tried manualy setting the wifi parameters and manualy starting dhcpcd?

vmatherly · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 4:26 pm Post subject:

Get it working w/o wep at first. Wep usualy makes thing more difficult. My card was completely plug and play before I turned WEP on.
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PoltheMol · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

yeah i did try that, and dhcp takes for like ages, than suddenly just kicks out the whole card :/ which is pretty weird.

And the whole idea was to try it without WEP enable indeed

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Kruegi · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 4:52 pm Post subject:

It doesn't look like a layer 1 or 2 problem.
Check your IP configuration!

PoltheMol · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

my ip config is perfecty alright.
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vmatherly · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 5:33 pm Post subject: wifi pcmcia hard time

When you say it kicks out the whole card what do you mean?

It sounds like a WAP specific setting, or lack of. On my card if I misconfigure the wap settings the light will turn solid while dhcpcd tries to get an ip. After it gives up it will start blinking again and the cards config clears. What I think you should try is testing a few different settings like "mode" "chanel". you can find all these options in the iwconfig man pages. you may even try setting wep keys. I suggest that if you do this set all 4 hex keys to the same thing on your ap. I had problems with this when I first configured my wifi settings.

try getting it all running using iwconfig manualy first. Once you know what config works you can apply them to you bootup config.

as far as your ip config the only thing I could see causing this would be if your dhcp server was not functioning on your wap which I dont think is the case.
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PoltheMol · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

well it puts the card in down mode :/ Like i have done ifconfig eth1 down. And if i try to get it up again with ifconfigi have to try several times before it takes it. As for the dhcp server: that one is perfectly up and running (the eth0 on my laptop gets an ip straight away so it cant be the dhcp imo).

But i'll try play some more with the options

Thnx in advance dude ^^
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zonk · Apprentice Joined: 23 May 2005 Posts: 176

it can be fairly random things. i had a router that worked just fine putting dhcp on a hardwire, wireless would only work if frame preamble was set to "long", though.

vmatherly · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 5:49 pm Post subject: wifi pcmcia hard time

Yea wifi is a strange animal, I found that the best way to learn its ins and outs is to read up on all the options and try them on your home wap.
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Victor Matherly
Wave Communications,Inc
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PoltheMol · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

well i read somewhere it could be rather good to upgrade the bios. So i've tried that, but it seems like the whole problem is that the drivers aren't working, since the flahsprogram can't communicate whatsoever with the card. I guess i'll have to find some modules or something to kick it in startmode :/
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PoltheMol · n00b Joined: 07 Nov 2002 Posts: 50

http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~bwthomas/prism54.shtml

i found this one while just googling for some answer. Seems like i bugged with compiling my kernel. Am trying this dude his mini-howto now, if it works out fine, it's maybe a nice link for other prismusers under gentoo.

[edit]

a small victory, following this guide i can already see the macaddress from my wificard in the logs on the router

thnx for all the help

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