How to configure wireless network card

Timothy Murphy tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
Sat Dec 2 23:39:17 UTC 2006


Matthew Saltzman wrote:

>> In my experience, NM just adds another layer of obfuscation
>> to an already confusing (and confused) setup.
>> I found after a lot of experiment (and requests on the NM mailing list)
>> that NM just did not work with my WiFi card,
>> a standard (if old) Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card.
>> Basically, it tried to turn the card to a mode it did not support.
> 
> I sort-of recall that thread.  I have a relatively old Orinoco card in one
> machine that works just fine with NM, except that there's no WPA support.
> I did nothing special to configure it, just used the standard tools
> (system-config-network and NM).

Your posting led me to try NetworkManager again,
but my experience was no better than before:
starting NM has the immediate effect of stopping my WiFi connection,
which until then was working perfectly ...

I see in /var/log/messages:
======================================
Dec  2 22:11:27 martha NetworkManager: <WARNING>
  get_scan_results (): card took too much time scanning.  Get a better one.
Dec  2 22:11:27 martha NetworkManager: <WARNING>
  nm_device_802_11_wireless_scan (): device eth0 returned an error.
======================================
Yes, well - either my card is not working properly,
or NetworkManager has a long was to go ...

Running "sudo service network restart" does not restore the link.
I have to re-boot the machine.

After that everything - except NM - is working again,
and scanning seems to work without any problem:
======================================
[tim at martha ~]$ sudo iwlist eth0 scan
eth0      Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 8A:13:22:EE:C9:17
                    ESSID:"maths.tcd.ie"
                    Mode:Ad-Hoc
                    Frequency:2.457 GHz (Channel 10)
                    Signal level:-57 dBm  Noise level:-97 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
======================================

The card is a Lucent Technologies Gold PCMCIA card (11b),
with, according to /var/log/dmesg, 
"Firmware determined as Lucent/Agere 6.04".




-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland




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