[NTLUG:Discuss] Wireless on a Sony VAIO

[steve]

Terry wrote:
> On 12/26/05, steve <sjbaker1 at airmail.net> wrote:
> 
>>I'm trying to get wireless networking up and working on
>>my son's new VAIO laptop.  Everything works using WinXP
>>and my LinkSys Wireless-G router using DHCP - but I get
>>"Network Unreachable" under Linux.
>>
>>Here is the setup:
>>
>>Sony VAIO PCG-782L - running SuSE 9.3.
>>Wireless chip: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG
>>
>>SuSE auto-detected the wireless chip, I configured
>>all of the network stuff (I believe) correctly - but
>>a 'ping' to any of my other computers just comes back
>>with "Network Unreachable".
>>
>>I can see the driver is installed ('lsmod' shows that
>>ipw2200 is installed and that 'firmware_class, ieee80211
>>and ieee80211_crypt depend on it).
>>
>>When I open the device description in the SuSE
>>Hardware Tool (aka suseplugger) it says;
>>
>>Status:
>>Available    Yes
>>Configured   No
>>
>>...as far as I can tell, I *have* configured it using
>>YaST - but perhaps that's not what it's talking about.
>>
>>Help!
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>https://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
> 
> 
> Show output from commands:
> # ifconfig
> &
> # iwconfig

The machine has a wired ethernet device as well as the wireless port - 
but it was disabled (via YaST) for this test:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
% ifconfig -a

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:01:4A:C3:50:C2
           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)

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:61 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
           TX packets:61 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
           RX bytes:4188 (4.0 Kb)  TX bytes:4188 (4.0 Kb)

sit0      Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
           NOARP  MTU:1480  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:0
           RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

% iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At one time, I understood all of this Linux/UNIX device mechanisms - but 
over the last couple of revisions, I've kinda lost track of the changes.

In the YaST setup tool, it used to name ethernet devices /dev/eth0,
/dev/eth1, etc.  But in SuSE 9.3, it gives them long, complicated
names involving the MAC address.

I don't understand how that works - but it evidently does.  On my
desktop machine (for example) YaST calls the wired ethernet
eth-id-00.50.ba.a2.88.6e - yet tools such as ifconfig still call
it 'eth0'.

 > Also see man pages for iwconfig, iwlist, iwpriv & iwspy

 From the output of iwconfig, I don't think iwlist, etc are going to
help much.

 > And if you have kwifimanager, look at that.

It clearly doesn't know that there is a Wifi card - there is a big
red X through the Wifi card icon and another red X through the
signal strength stuff.

 > But mainly just look at ifconfig and iwconfig and see what needs to be
 > done / changed.

Well, I'm looking at them - but my feeble brain is refusing to tell
me what needs to be done/changed!

It looks to me like 'eth0' (as reported by ifconfig) has the MAC
address of the wired ethernet adapter - which I've disabled in
YaST in order to avoid this very confusion!  I've no idea
what 'sit0' is.

If I do a 'ping' to my desktop machine, ifconfig shows the TX
packet count of eth0 increasing (although ping reports 'Network
Unreachable').

It all just looks like the Wifi port is not configured at all - even
though YaST shows that it is the ONLY network adapter that's
set up.