how to make my wireless adapter work on ubuntu 8.04 32 bit

Hello,

Could you please tell me what kind of wireless network are you trying to connect to? Is it an ad-hoc network or one with an access point?

Also, if you type iwconfig in a terminal, do you see some information about your wireless card listed, or do all devices say "no wireless extensions" ?

Best,
Prashant

Hi Prashant,

I'm getting your message at work, so I can't give you the a full response now. I'll jump on that and reply again as soon as I get home.

For now, let me just say thanks for being kind enough to reply.

Until later,

Bryce

Prashant Vaibhav <email address hidden> wrote: Your question #15423 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/15423

    Status: Open => Needs information

Prashant Vaibhav requested for more information:
Hello,

Could you please tell me what kind of wireless network are you trying to
connect to? Is it an ad-hoc network or one with an access point?

Also, if you type iwconfig in a terminal, do you see some information
about your wireless card listed, or do all devices say "no wireless
extensions" ?

Best,
Prashant

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To answer this request for more information, you can either reply to
this email or enter your reply at the following page:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/15423

You received this question notification because you are a direct
subscriber of the question.

Hi again Prashant,

I'm home and ran iwconfig as you suggested and got the following:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:off/any Nickname:"Broadcom 4311"
          Mode:Managed Access Point: Invalid
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=-256 dBm Noise level=-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

As for whether I have an ad hoc or access point setup, I confess I just don't know which definition my setup fits. I can tell you my desktop computer connects to my Link Sys router via a cat-5 cable, and the router then connects to my DSL modem the same way -- this setup worked fine (for over a year) on that very latptop when I had Windows XP installed on it.

Does this help with your diagnosis at all?

Thanks,

Bryce

Prashant Vaibhav <email address hidden> wrote: Your question #15423 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/15423

    Status: Open => Needs information

Prashant Vaibhav requested for more information:
Hello,

Could you please tell me what kind of wireless network are you trying to
connect to? Is it an ad-hoc network or one with an access point?

Also, if you type iwconfig in a terminal, do you see some information
about your wireless card listed, or do all devices say "no wireless
extensions" ?

Best,
Prashant

--
To answer this request for more information, you can either reply to
this email or enter your reply at the following page:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/15423

You received this question notification because you are a direct
subscriber of the question.

Hi,

Thanks for the information. First, your wireless card is detected and working properly, which is good news. Second, since you use a wireless router, you have an access point setup in all probability.

So let's start doing things ourselves with the command line and see what works. Assuming that in Windows your wireless worked fine without having to setup IP addresses, you should be able to do the same in Ubuntu.

Start a terminal, and type this:

sudo iwconfig eth1 essid YourNetworkName key s:YourKey channel auto mode Managed

Obviously you should replace YourNetworkName and YourKey with whatever your setup is.
If you don't know the network name, or whether you should specify the encryption key or not, you can find out easily by typing:

sudo iwlist scanning

This will scan and give you a list of wireless networks available (I'd appreciate if you could also post that to further help with the troubleshooting).

So, whether your iwconfig command is successful or not can be found by just typing iwconfig eth1 in the terminal, about 10-12 seconds after the first iwconfig command. If it says ESSID:"yournetwork" and it is associated, that's a good sign. Now just type:

sudo dhclient

...to get your IP address. and try going to www.google.com, it should work. If it works, let me know and then we can figure out how to make this permanent. If however it doesn't, then we need to do additional troubleshooting.

Hope this was useful!

Hi Prashant,

I carried your your instructions, and not knowing my network name or key, I started with "sudo iwlist scanning", which returned:

Usage: iwlist [interface] scanning [essid NNN] [last]
              [interface] frequency
              [interface] channel
              [interface] bitrate
              [interface] rate
              [interface] encryption
              [interface] keys
              [interface] power
              [interface] txpower
              [interface] retry
              [interface] ap
              [interface] accesspoints
              [interface] peers
              [interface] event
              [interface] auth
              [interface] wpakeys
              [interface] genie
              [interface] modulation

With that, I poked around a little bit, but was still unable to determine my network name and key, though it returned "2 key sizes : 40, 104bits" when I ran "sudo iwlist keys"

Thoughts?

-B

Hello,

Sorry I missed one thing in the iwlist command. It should be :

sudo iwlist eth1 scanning

Vaibhav, Is your SSID hidden? If so, try to switch the SSID broadcast on and see whether it works.

Thanks. I ran the command ...

sudo iwlist eth1 scanning

and got this ...

eth1 Interface doesn't support scanning : No such device

Hello,

That is strange. According to the iwconfig output you posted, your wireless card is labeled eth1, but iwlist eth1 scanning says there is no such device. I am assuming you have a USB wireless card. If so, please make sure it is plugged in when you issue the command. In case it is a laptop with a built-in wifi adapter, see if it is turned on. In either case, you can type iwconfig at the terminal to see whether it is working and what it is labeled as.

Best,
Prashant

Thanks Prashant,

"iwconfig" from the terminal still returns:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:off/any Nickname:"Broadcom 4311"
          Mode:Managed Access Point: Invalid
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=-256 dBm Noise level=-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

... I don't know if that "ESSID: off", "RTS thr:off", "Fragment thr:off" are causing the problem, but it they are, I don't know how to turn them on.

Also, I can tell you I'm using a built-in adapter -- not an USB card.

Regards,

Bryce

Hmm ok, assuming you know your wireless network name and password, you can use this command to connect:

sudo iwconfig eth1 essid YourNetworkName key s:YourKey channel auto mode Managed

And then type iwconfig to see whether the essid has changed from off/any to what you specified, and that it says Associated.

If yes, then type sudo dhclient eth1 to get an IP address and then try surfing the net. It should work.