[PLUG] Wireless (sigh)

Wed Apr 9 23:05:42 UTC 2008

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 12:35:04 -0700
"Rogan Creswick" <creswick at gmail.com> dijo:

> On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 12:10 PM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> >  1) Is there a command line tool to get an IP address from an access
> >  point?

> $ dhclient wlan0   # or eth0, or eth1, or whatever interface you want
> to get an ip for.
> 
> I think there is another dhcp implementation called dhcp-client, but
> dhclient is what shows up on my ubuntu box.

Well, that doesn't getting me anywhere. As I said before, I can connect to an AP, I just can't get an IP address from any of them. That includes pubnet at PSU, Metrofi (wifiradar showed a strong signal), and in McMenamin's (also a strong signal). Whatever is wrong is blocking me from getting an IP address and it is happening regardless of what AP I connect to.

Here is what I get from the command line:

jjj at Devil7:~$ sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid pubnet.pdx.edu
jjj at Devil7:~$ sudo dhclient wlan0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.5
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:13:e8:b7:47:59
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:13:e8:b7:47:59
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

And here is ifconfig, just in case there is something in it that helps:

jjj at Devil7:~$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1A:6B:D0:97:F9  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Base address:0x1840 Memory:fe200000-fe220000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:447 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:447 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:184486 (180.1 KB)  TX bytes:184486 (180.1 KB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:E8:B7:47:59  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wlan0:ava Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:E8:B7:47:59  
          inet addr:169.254.6.226  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

wmaster0  Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-13-E8-B7-47-59-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

> # both in one command:
> $ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

When I first tried this all it gave me was (but see below):

jjj at Devil7:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
Reconfiguring network interfaces...done.

> The /etc/init.d/networking script will use values from /etc/network/interfaces

There is something weird going on with the interfaces file. Originally it said:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto wlan1
iface wlan1 inet dhcp
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

So I edited it to change the wlan1 to wlan0. After rebooting it now said:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

And that's all it said. So I edited it and added:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

And saved it, then reran the restart command, and this is what I got:

jjj at Devil7:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
Reconfiguring network interfaces...Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.5
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:13:e8:b7:47:59
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:13:e8:b7:47:59
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
done.

So again, it is still not getting an IP address. I can connect to anything just fine, but none of the networks will give me an IP address. And I get the same results if I use the Netgear WG511T card. There must be something unrelated to the iwl4965 driver that is messed up. What could cause networks not to give me an IP address? One thing that occurs to me is, what if they can't hear me?

I think I need more suggestions for troubleshooting. 