SuSE 9.2 and wireless help

[Steelerz37]

I seem to have it setup correctly I can ping my router, but when I try to ping anything like yahoo or google I get destination unreachable. My internet is not down, as I am using it to type this message. I can access the routers config page through a web browser, just not other web pages. I am very new to linux so I am not sure what else I can try.

When I do ifconfig it all seems normal, I get an ip and everything through DHCP
When I do iwconfig eth1 is my wireless and it has all the info I put into the YaST configuration.

I also have wep enabled and must be setup correctly since I can access the routers config page


TIA for any help!!

Ben

 

[n0cmonkey]

netstat -rn | more Look for "default" or "gateway." Does the IP there (there is an IP there, right?) match up with your router?

 

[Steelerz37]

there were 4 different lines that showed up, all gateways were 0.0.0.0, except the last one, it was my router. The destination was 0.0.0.0 though. I found some instructions to load new drivers and firmware for the card, now YaST sees both ethernet and wireless, but ifconfig doesnt show my wireless. Not sure what I did.

 

[n0cmonkey]

No clue what you did. Try adding a default gateway. It should be your router. That is, of course, if you get back to having a working wireless card.

 

[Steelerz37]

it seems i read that the ethernet would hide the wirelessfor some reason, they said to do something like if eth0 down if eth1 up
i cant seem to find that now, any idea on what i'm talking about?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I've never done wireless in Linux, most days I can't stand Linux.

EDIT: If you down an interface (ifconfig eth? down), it shouldn't disappear from ifconfig. You can try ifconfig eth? up, if you want though.

 

[smc13]

Bring up google and type "man ifconfig linux" and you will see some instructions on the ifconfig command (man is short for manual). You can also type man ifconfig on your linux box for instructions or info ifconfig for that matter (I like man pages better).


Ifconfig is the equivalent of ipconfig and winipconfig in the windows world (ifconfig is a much older command but who cares). Ifconfig is the command to configure your network interfaces (your nics - your network cards). In linux, your network cards are eth# (# is a number). eth0 is the first interface, eth1 is the second. typing ifconfig eth0 down take the first interface down, so it can not be used, ifconfig eth1 up, brings up the second nic. If you type ifconfig by itself, you will see all the configured network interfaces (it is the equivalent of ifconfig -a).

Btw, which wireless nic are you using? Are you sure it even works in linux?

 

[Steelerz37]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I've never done wireless in Linux, most days I can't stand Linux.

EDIT: If you down an interface (ifconfig eth? down), it shouldn't disappear from ifconfig. You can try ifconfig eth? up, if you want though.

when i do that it says interface not found

Yea, I'm sure it works, I found drivers and stuff for them but I ended up doing something to break it while doing that. I've also been reading that it should work out of the box as long as ipw-firmware package is installed. After I found that package(not on my disc for some reason) it would let me configure it and everything, which is all I had to do to be able to ping my router and access its setup. The router was assigning the wireless nic an IP through DHCP. when i used the wired ethernet I was also using DHCP and it worked fine, so I dont understand why it wont work when I can ping the router.....well i may just reinstall suse to get the wireless to show up again if i cant find anything else out.

 

[n0cmonkey]

We didn't have time to track down the networking issue.

 

[Steelerz37]

I hate not knowing enough about linux to get a good start, like everytime I've had something go wrong I would always reinstall it to get it fixed. So this is the last time I reinstall it Unless I want to change it to only linux, right now I have 40 gigs to windows and 20 to SuSE. But when its finished I'll get it to where I can ping my router with the wireless and we can see what we can think of

 

[Steelerz37]

whenever I do ifconfig eth0 down (wired)

then

netstat --rn|more
i have nothing in the gateway column. I'm guessing this is my problem? I've tried adding it into the router under eth1 through YaST, no luck in getting it to work though

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Steelerz37
whenever I do ifconfig eth0 down (wired)

then

netstat --rn|more
i have nothing in the gateway column. I'm guessing this is my problem? I've tried adding it into the router under eth1 through YaST, no luck in getting it to work though

That's pretty normal. The command you did essentually turns off the network card. If you turn it off, there should be no gateway.

 

[Steelerz37]

yea but I left the wireless up, eth1 and there is no gateway listed. I understand why it isnt listed anymore when I take down eth0

 

[n0cmonkey]

Oh, ok. I misunderstood. You can add a router with something like (and this may be a bit off because I have to look it up everytime and I don't have access to a system at the moment): route add gateway ROUTER_IP

 

[Crusty]

It would be:

route add default gw ip_address

 

[Steelerz37]

alright, that added the gateway to my wireless interface, but still no go. Can still ping LAN addresses and access routers config pages, but no external addresses

 

[n0cmonkey]

more /etc/resolv.conf

If it doesn't return something like: nameserver IP_ADDRESS, then you didn't get DNS servers from the dns server.

 

[Steelerz37]

ok, nothing came up at all, just dropped down to another line like it would a successful command, but didnt show anything

 

[Steelerz37]

when i do that with wireless down, and wired up I do get dns servers. why would it not work correctly over wireless?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Steelerz37
when i do that with wireless down, and wired up I do get dns servers. why would it not work correctly over wireless?

I'm not sure. Since you know what those DNS servers are, you could setup the file manually (or save it when it's there one time), and configure the dhcp client to not touch it. I'm not sure what dhcp client you're using, so I'll be no help figuring out how to cutomize it. Check the man page.

 

[Steelerz37]

wow, somehow i just got it working, did something it liked with the DNS servers. First it didnt work, then I checked the gateway again and it was gone. So i added it again with the route command, and viola!! I'm still puzzled as to why it works fine with the wired ethernet, but not wireless

as far as the client it is dhcpd (?)

I guess to get it to work on another wireless network, I will just have to add those dns servers to the file as well, and maybe have to always add the gateway with the route command?

 

[n0cmonkey]

You can script that.

Are you using dhcpcd for the dhcp client? (which dhcpcd, if it returns something like /usr/sbin/dhcpcd then you're probably using it)

This is one of the reasons I prefer static IP addresses.

 

[Steelerz37]

what command would i use to see for sure what dhcp client i'm using. Sorry I keep asking all of these questions. I printed out the stuff you have in your sig to look over and see what I can learn, so i am trying

 

[bersl2]

Wireless is still a rough area. It took too long for the chipset makers to get the message.

This is the most complete general list of wireless support on Linux.

I don't know how Suse handles these things because I usually do them manually.

 

[Steelerz37]

i got it fixed turns out it was something to do with the wired ethernet being setup first, whether avalible or not, kept the wireless from getting dns, and gateway. I set the wired to manual and now it works great Thanks for all the help. I have another question though. I am trying to get my touchpad to work correctly and I found drivers called tpconfig. It needs to be run under console only. How do I get out of X and just to console? I tried the Cntrl + Alt + Backspace which kills X but restarts it automatically.