wireless quit

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jrm_debian · #1 Post by **jrm_debian** » 2006-07-18 02:38

Had pcmcia wireless (Actiontec / Atmel) working. Made a post congratulating myself. Now its time to eat crow.

Old laptop with weak battery, so I made the fatal mistake of turning it off. Now I can't get back onto the internet.

During the boot up it correctly sees the card, it says all the right things about MAC address ( I wrote it down), manf id, drivers, etc. But when I issue the dhclient eth0 command it pings away and finally quits. It is pinging 255.255.255.255 Is this correct? Methinks it should be pinging 255.255.255.0 At least I assume that's the problem.

I found dhclient eth0 somewhere on this forum, and that seemed to be the final step to make it work after going through all the "thekelleys.org" download (via M$ windows), copy onto CD, copy to Debian, tar, run script, install steps.

Also, while trying to figure out what to do (and playing games) the light on the card is blinking away. Its talking to the router, I just can't figure out what its saying!

Also, dump_cis doesn't give me exactly the same info as before or the same info as the log messages during bootup.

Help!

p.s. I also copied this post into the Installation section of the forum in case different folks are monitoring different boards.

Grifter · #2 Post by **Grifter** » 2006-07-18 15:07

use iwconfig to give it an essid name / wep key, before running dhclient

jrm_debian · #3 Post by **jrm_debian** » 2006-07-19 02:59

BINGO!

Thanks grifter, that did it.

In case anyone else want to know:

iwconfig eth0 essid any channel 6
dhclient eth0

I used the card with my M$ win98 disk and saw channel 6. Before I noticed something about channel 4. I decided to try "any" rather than my private router network and it worked!

Rob

Grifter · #4 Post by **Grifter** » 2006-07-19 13:27

switch to sid temporarily and apt-get install aircrack-ng (then switch back to etch) and run airodump-ng -c 0 eth0

jrm_debian · #5 Post by **jrm_debian** » 2006-07-19 22:48

Whoa, slow down... javascript:emoticon(':)')
Smile

switch to sid? switch back to etch? I installed with "sarge". How do you switch from one to another, and why?

What is aircrack and what is airodump?

I would like to know how to make the previous commands run automagically at boot and not have to type them in every time. Will these two do the trick?

Off the immediate topic, but, Linux is the core (2.whatever), many folks create distros, I used sarge, Debian has etch in testing, what is the difference between sarge and etch?
- Packages made available?
- Next core release?
- Different scripts to check hardware, do the install, but basic file structure the same?
- Once Linux is installed do you then change/upgrade from sarge to etch?

ajdlinux · #6 Post by **ajdlinux** » 2006-07-19 23:40

jrm_debian wrote:I used sarge, Debian has etch in testing, what is the difference between sarge and etch?
- Packages made available?
- Next core release?
- Different scripts to check hardware, do the install, but basic file structure the same?
- Once Linux is installed do you then change/upgrade from sarge to etch?

All of them are true. Etch has:

* more packages
* significantly newer packages
* will become next stable version (expected in December)
* newer hardware detection packages
* sarge can be upgraded to etch.

Grifter · #7 Post by **Grifter** » 2006-07-19 23:52

the package aircrack-ng is small and has no large dependencies, so it's safe to install it from sid, the unstable dist of debian

you switch temporarily to sid by specifying unstable (sid) sources in /etc/apt/sources.list (you can just replace sarge with sid or unstable), and then apt-get update, and installing the package, and then switching back to etch or sarge, and running apt-get update again

airodump is a tool that monitors the airwaves, so you can find accesspoints even if you don't know their names, which it sounded like you needed to do

lacek · #8 Post by **lacek** » 2006-07-20 09:35

You can list the available access points with the

Code: Select all

iwlist scan

command as well.

Grifter · #9 Post by **Grifter** » 2006-07-20 12:59

No, iwlist scan only lists the accesspoint which broadcast their essid, you need to monitor the airwaves to see an accesspoint which doesn't broadcast essid

jrm_debian · #10 Post by **jrm_debian** » 2006-07-22 01:00

Whew, what a trip!

First I changed /etc/apt/sources.list (copied/pasted/changed main to etch, commented out previous main lines), apt-get update, then apt-get upgrade (to get upgraded to etch). Watched all kinds of interesting things scroll by, and watched, and watched, and watched... Remember I'm running from an older laptop.

Then changed to sources to sid (copy/paste/edit/comment). apt-get update, apt-get install aircrack-ng, then change sources back to etch (change comments around), apt-get update. - Ran out of time to "play" so put it aside for a while - next day, back to the gauntlet - checked to see if still connected to the internet, any new messages, and everything was working -

airodump-ng -c 0 eth0 take a breath, hit return, and....

ioctl (SIOCSWMODE) failed Invalid argument
Error setting monitor mode on eth0

Looks Greek to me. Can you interpret?javascript:emoticon(':?')

I really don't need this program now (search for available access points) since the laptop was about 18" from the wireless antenna at the time, and I know all the pertinent details of my home network, but wanted to go ahead and set it up for the day I do take it roaming.

Thanks for your help.

Rob

Grifter · #11 Post by **Grifter** » 2006-07-22 01:48

Not all chipsets support going into monitor mode (which is what you need in order to monitor the airwaves), and to make it even trickier, some chipsets do support monitor mode but only using certain firmware versions (:

you go into monitor mode like this:

iwconfig eth0 mode monitor

to change it back, replace monitor with managed, there's also a mode called ad-hoc in which you use no accesspoints, but rather just connect to other computers running in ad-hoc and make your own network

type dmesg | tail when you load your card in, it might give you some information about the hardware, lspci if it's a cardbus pci bridge will give you more info, and finally pccardctl ident will give you further info (using pcmciautils for 2.6 it's called pccardctl, if you use pcmcia-cs with a 2.4 kernel it's called just cardctl)

oh and lsmod to see which drivers it loads clearly (:

then pull all that info thru google, and find out if it's possible to get monitor mode for your chipset, you can also check the docs on the site, they have a bunch of chipsets and recommended firmwares, http://www.aircrack-ng.org