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Jonathanius
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Joined: 25 Aug 2008
Posts: 4
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 Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:02 pm Post subject: Installing Gentoo from minimal CD: won't connect to WPA |
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I have posted this thread on both Linux Forums and Linux Questions, people have offered solutions but none of them have fixed the problem so here we go again:
(This is not an exact quote, it has been revised for clarity)
| Quote: | Is it even possible to install the Gentoo 2008.0 with the minimal CD through a WPA(-PSK) connection? The Gentoo Handbook(x86) doesn't even mention WPA until the fourth section of Chapter 4(Wireless Networking) still, I can't imagine that a distro this size of Gentoo wouldn’t have the capabilities to connect to WPA until fully installed.
I'm trying to install Gentoo on an old Toshiba Satellite laptop with:
Processor:Celeron 430.4 MHZ
RAM: 64mb
HDD: approx 6GB
Chipset: Intel 1440BX
It meets minimum requirements for the Minimal CD install but not for the Live CD (with it nice new point-and-click GUI installer). I'm trying to connect to the net via the Linksys WUSB54G v4 network adapter (through a USB 1.0 port).
I have tested the Network Adapter with a different computer under WinXP and it works fine.
Gentoo recognizes my Network Adapter immediately as wlan0.
If I run net-setup it will display (using iwconfig) the correct SSID and access point, but both "Link Quality" and "Signal Level" appear at zero and a ping returns "unknown host". Also the "Encryption key" displays 6 sequences of characters (a combination of letters and numbers) each 4 characters in length separated by dashes (-). Apparently it thinks the passphrase I enter is a WEP key even asking: "Are you entering you WEP key in HEX or ASCII?"
I tried configuring my network manually as described in the Gentoo Handbook under "Using ifconfig And route" but bash returns:
| Code: | | bash: ${192.168.1.1} bad substitution |
I tryed called wpa_passphrase which has you input the ssid and passphrase and then displays:
| Code: | ssid="[myfakenetworkname]"
#psk="[myfakepassword]"
psk= (a really really long string of letters and numbers) |
After doing that, iwconfig shows the Encryption key in the same format as previously described but with 19 groups of characters instead of only 6 so apparently I'm making some progress but not more than that. Both Link Quality and Signal level still display 0 and a ping still returns "unknown host".
The last the I've tried is wpa_cli but after displaying the version number (v0.5.7) and copyright and license info it says: "Could not connect to wpa_supplicant - re-trying" after which is displayed a blinking text input underscore thingy and it just sits there until I have to force the computer off.
So is it possible to connect to a WPA network via minimal CD and if so how? Help would be much appreciated as this is my second Linux install (I put Debian on the same box about a week ago) |
When I posted this in July, FireArrow of Linux Forums suggested I try:
| Code: | wpa_passphrase [your essid] [yourpassphrase] >> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlan0 [-B] (the -B is for forking the process to background. Don't do that until you have seen that it works)
dhcpcd -d wlan0 |
Upon trying it:
| Code: | | wpa_passphrase [mynetworkssid] [mypassphrase] >> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf |
it apparently works fine, but when I enter the second line:
| Code: | | wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -i wlan0 [-B] |
it returns:
| Code: | ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Operation not supported
WEXT auth param 4 value 0x0 - ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Operation not supported
WEXT auth param 5 value 0x1 - ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Resource temporarily unavailable |
FireArrow had said not to fork the process to the background until I knew it worked, so I did it without the [-B] and then just the -B without the brackets: same output except without the "Resource temporarily unavailable."
After that I tryed the debugging thing as described on linux.die.net/man/8/wpa_supplicant:
| Code: | | wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0 -d |
but it gave me:
| Code: | No Suitable AP found
setting scan request 5 sec 0 usec
Starting AP scan
RTMNEWLINK: operstate = 0 ifi_flags=0x1003 ([UP])
wireless event: cmd = 0x8b19 len 8
Received 250 bytes of scan results
Scan results:1
Selecting BSS from priority group 0
0:00:16:b6:33:dd:e2 ssid='mynetworkname' wpa_ie_len=26 rsn_ie_len=0 caps 0x11
Skip-SSID |
(it then repeated those those lines until I had to force it off.)
Then at the suggestion of Pearlseattle from the Linux Questions forum I tried the following script:
| Code: | wpa_supplicant -Bw -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf #Add "-d" at the end to show debug informations
sleep 4
ifconfig wlan0 10.0.0.18 netmask 255.0.0.0
sleep 2
route add default gw 10.0.0.2 |
Pearlseattle told me to edit my wpa_supplicant.conf to look like this:
| Code: | ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
# Ensure that only root can read the WPA configuration
ctrl_interface_group=0
# Let wpa_supplicant take care of scanning and AP selection
ap_scan=1
# Same as previous, but request SSID-specific scanning (for APs that reject broadcast SSID)
network={
ssid="thessidofyouraccesspoint"
scan_ssid=1
psk="Your nice passphrase"
priority=2
} |
Not knowing how to edit my wpa_supplicant.conf file or even if I have one at this stage I input everything into the command line after which the computer returns:
| Code: | | bash: syntax error near unexpected token '}' |
After this if I try:
It shows the essid as "ARTSTUP1" which is not the name of our network, in fact I have absolutely no idea where it came from, it also says that the Encryption key is off
So, if anyone has any suggestions on how to get this working please post.
-Thanks in advance.
Jonathanius |
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zoni
n00b
Joined: 04 Sep 2006
Posts: 60
Location: The Netherlands
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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Hey there, welcome to Gentoo 
First off, iwconfig and friends are for unencrypted and WEP encrypted networks only. So you need wpa_supplicant for anything better than that.
With that said, what Pearlseattle told you should work. The wpa_supplicant.conf file he meant is /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf. (Which you passed to wpa_supplicant with the -c flag earlier when your post said wpa_supplicant -Bw -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf)
So, to (hopefully) get your networking done:
First, edit wpa_supplicant.conf. Just use any text editor you like, for example nano as the handbook uses:
| Code: | | nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf |
Then make sure it reads, as Pearlseattle said, the following: (With 'You_SSID' replaced by the SSID of the AP you're connecting to, and 'Your_PSK' replaced with the WPA passphrase it is using of course)
| Code: | ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
# Ensure that only root can read the WPA configuration
ctrl_interface_group=0
# Let wpa_supplicant take care of scanning and AP selection
ap_scan=1
# Same as previous, but request SSID-specific scanning (for APs that reject broadcast SSID)
network={
ssid="Your_SSID"
scan_ssid=1
psk="Your_PSK"
priority=2
} |
Once you have that file set up, save and close it, then do:
| Code: | | wpa_supplicant -Bw -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf |
Provided the drivers for your card work fine (It probably does, since it detected it as wlan0, but you never know..) you should get a connection after some time.
If it does, great, you can continue on with the steps listed in the handbook.
(You probably have dhcp running on your network, so should get you an ip and everything, so your networking is done.)
If not, post back with the steps you took and where and how it went wrong. |
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Jonathanius
n00b
Joined: 25 Aug 2008
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you, zoni for replying so promptly, and explaining everything so well, I did everything you told me to and here's what happened:
(After successfully editing the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf file).
I enter:
| Code: | | wpa_supplicant -Bw -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conifig |
It returns:
| Code: | | padlock: VIA PadLock not detected. |
Ok, I'm not sure exactly what that means, (VIA PadLock appears to be a hardware encryption security engine) but I go ahead and try:
It returns:
| Code: | Error, wlan0: timed out
Error, wlan0: lease information file '/var/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-wlan0.info does not exist |
I try again:
It returns:
| Code: | | Error, wlan0 : dhcpcd already running on pid 14800 (/var/run/dhcpcd-wlan0.pid) |
I open the file in Nano:
| Code: | | nano /var/run/dhcpcd-wlan0.pid |
The only contents of the file is the number:
Pings are returning:
When you say iwconfig and friends don't work for WPA I assume that ifconfig is included in friends, but I'm not sure if thats what you mean, so I go ahead and try the manual network configuration like it says to do in the handbook if dhcpcd doesn't work, but like last time it says:
| Code: | | bash: ${192.168.1.101}: bad substitution |
-Cheers
Jonathanius |
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Jonathanius
n00b
Joined: 25 Aug 2008
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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UPDATE:
As a final resort I restarted, and redid everything you told me before, this time I didn't get the VIA PadLock error, but still got:
| Code: | Error, wlan0: timed out
Error, wlan0: lease information file '/var/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-wlan0.info' does not exist |
when I enter:
So, there is now only one problem.
Pings still don't work.
-Cheers
Jonathanius |
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Jonathanius
n00b
Joined: 25 Aug 2008
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 9:51 pm Post subject: |
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Yet another update:
Apparently the DHCPCD is at least able to access the information I opened /var/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-wlan0.info - the file that it didn't have "lease information" for (whatever that means). Here's what was there:
| Code: | IPADDR='169.254.182.254'
NETMASK='255.255.0.0'
BROADCAST='169.254.255.255'
LEASEDFROM='0'
LEASEDTIME='10'
RENEWALTIME='5'
REBINDTIME='8'
INTERFACE='wlan0'
CLASSID='dhcpcd 3.1.5'
CLIENTID='ff:00:00:00:03:00:01:00:01:10:46:ea:37:00:12:17:66:b9:3c'
DHCPCHADDR='00:12:17:66:b9:3c' |
So, obviously since its able to get that info, its associated with the network somehow, but whats stopping it from connecting? Anyone have any idea?
-Jonathanius |
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Installing Gentoo
