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Using Cisco wireless card under Redhat 8

V

vetteguy

Diamond Member
I recently installed RH8 on my new HP laptop. I have one of the Cisco aironet wireless cards, and have been trying to get it to work. If I insert it, it recognizes the card, and even finds my SSID and everything. The laptop has a built-in ethernet port, so I added a network connection of type "wireless" and assigned it to eth1. I try to enable the card, but it sits for about a minute, and then comes back with an error telling me it couldn't start eth1. The card is getting power, has lights blinking, etc. I have it set to use DHCP as per my WAP. Has anyone gotten this to work? Am I missing a step? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
 
EDIT: oh, yeah... before you do any of this: if your WEP key is an ASCII string, you need to prefix it with "s:". So if your key is hotdog, you enter s:hotdog in the key field.

I mucked around with a Lucent card on RH8 the other day and had similar problems, but eventually got it working. IIRC, there's a hotplug script that will bring up an interface as soon as the card is recognized. I think that the script complicated things because of the built-in NIC on the machine. What (I think) I did:

1) Your card should be inserted and recognized - "cardctl ident 0" (maybe 1) should report the name correctly.
1) run "ifconfig" at the terminal - make sure all your interfaces besides loopback (lo) are down. So if eth0 shows up, do "ifconfig eth0 down"
2) System Settings --> Network
3) Remove any configured connections on the Connection tab (the first tab, name may be wrong)
4) Check out the hardware tab, and make sure that all your NIC's are listed there, on the appropriate interface (eth0, eth1, etc.) This should match up with /etc/modules.conf. So if the wireless card is eth1, you should have a line like

alias eth1 aironet_cs

in modules.conf, substituting the proper module name for my guesswork.

5) Back on the network screen, switch back to the Connection tab and add your wireless connection.

I think that worked for me, but I wasn't really taking notes. But I suspect your problem is with the OS and not with the card itself.

Hope that helps...
 
It's been a while since I messed with 802.11b in Linux, but IIRC the interface should be wlan0, not eth0 because it's most definatly not ethernet.
 
Thanks to both of you...I got busy with another project so haven't tried this out yet, but I will in the morning.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
It's been a while since I messed with 802.11b in Linux, but IIRC the interface should be wlan0, not eth0 because it's most definatly not ethernet.
Click to expand...

It must have changed, then, because both the TLDP docs and the OS scripts and tools all use eth? now.
 
It must have changed, then, because both the TLDP docs and the OS scripts and tools all use eth? now.
Click to expand...

The scripts need to be smarter then because it was, should be and will be wlan*, just like ARCnet devices are arc*, PPP devices are ppp*, token ring devices are tr*, X.25 are scc*, bonded pseudo-devices are bond*, etc. Ethernet devices are the most common, but they're definately not the only thing out there.

And this portion of TLDP correctly calls it wlan0.
 
And this portion of TLDP correctly calls it wlan0.
Click to expand...

So it does... interesting. The plain-old Wireless-HOWTO, which is only a couple of months old, never mentioned wlan?. The card in the section you referenced takes it's driver from the same section of the kernel configuration as my Wavelan, so I'd think they would be similar. Are the names just aliases to lower-level stuff (IRQ's, IO ranges, etc.), or is there more to it?

 
Ok I'm going to have to admit some Linux stupidity here...

When adding a new network device, I don't see the option for wlan anywhere. I have eth0-eth9.

Also, in the /etc/modules.conf, I don't have an eth1 entry. The wireless card is inserted, running, and shows up under the hardware tab as device eth1.

Any suggestions?
 
Are the names just aliases to lower-level stuff (IRQ's, IO ranges, etc.), or is there more to it?
Click to expand...

I think they're so the kernel can figure out which driver owns which device with a 'friendly' name. I also think it's for organization, it's easy to see tulip.o startup and initialize eth0 so you know it's an ethernet interface, just like when you see prism2_cs (or whatever it's called) claim wlan0 you know it's your wireless card that it's using. If I have 3 interfaces running, one ethernet one token-ring and one wireless I can easily figure out which is which and change it accordingly, if Linux used the BSD naming conventions you'd have to know which driver drove which card to figure out which device is which because they're named after the driver (i.e. the tulip driver names its card tul0).
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Are the names just aliases to lower-level stuff (IRQ's, IO ranges, etc.), or is there more to it?
Click to expand...

I think they're so the kernel can figure out which driver owns which device with a 'friendly' name. I also think it's for organization, it's easy to see tulip.o startup and initialize eth0 so you know it's an ethernet interface, just like when you see prism2_cs (or whatever it's called) claim wlan0 you know it's your wireless card that it's using. If I have 3 interfaces running, one ethernet one token-ring and one wireless I can easily figure out which is which and change it accordingly, if Linux used the BSD naming conventions you'd have to know which driver drove which card to figure out which device is which because they're named after the driver (i.e. the tulip driver names its card tul0).
Click to expand...
Ok...now I'm really lost. Maybe I should quit this while I'm ahead!

I'm assuming that Redhat has a driver for this card, since it's showing up as a Cisco/Aironet wireless card (which it is). Is there something I'm supposed to configure in the modules.conf to set it to wlan0? I've looked around on google but most of that stuff is way above my head. I work with UNIX everyday at work, but nothing too hardcore into network configuration. This is my first "real" attempt at Linux.
 
I wish I could be more help vetteguy, but I have no experience with RedHat 8. The only time I used my wirless card in Linux was with Debian and I used the wlan-ng patches that aren't in the kernel officially yet. I don't know if RedHat incorporated those patches for their release or what, but if it's calling it eth1 I wouls be suspicious of a problem.

Post the output of dmesg (it'll probably be fairly long), maybe it'll give some insight.

If you feel brave http://www.linux-wlan.org/ is the homepage for the WLAN-ng patches I used, IIRC it's just one patch to download and compile. As you can see wireless support is still in heavy development, it won't be as easy to setup as say Ethernet until everything's settled down and is included in the official kernel.
 
Well, look... we can quibble over what constitutes a correct name or we can solve a problem. If RH wants to call the card eth1 instead of wlan1, then let it, so long as it works - and I'm posting through a wireless Lucent card called eth1 on RH8, so I'm pretty sure it will work.

Go ahead and create the connection on eth1, if that's what the hardware tab recognizes the card as. Like I said before, you might want to check beforehand that your connections are down, in case a hotplug script brought them up. And if you don't have the modules.conf line, add it in. Let us know what happens.
 
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
Well, look... we can quibble over what constitutes a correct name or we can solve a problem. If RH wants to call the card eth1 instead of wlan1, then let it, so long as it works - and I'm posting through a wireless Lucent card called eth1 on RH8, so I'm pretty sure it will work.

Go ahead and create the connection on eth1, if that's what the hardware tab recognizes the card as. Like I said before, you might want to check beforehand that your connections are down, in case a hotplug script brought them up. And if you don't have the modules.conf line, add it in. Let us know what happens.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry...I'm not trying to be difficult, I just am very new at this and am trying to get it to work.

Ok...I removed the reference to the wireless card in "Devices". I inserted the card, and went back in, and it showed up in hardware. I then added a new device (wireless connection) to eth1. I saved all my changes. I went into the modules.conf and all I still have is the following line:

alias eth0 via-rhine

What should I add for eth1? alias eth1 aironet_cs? Maybe I'll give that a try and see what happens.
 
Ok here's what I did...

I added in a line in the modules.conf:

alias eth1 aironet_cs

When I opened the Network panel, I got a message telling me that in the modules.conf file there was a reference to aironet_cs for eth1, which differed from the currently loaded module airo. I went back into the modules.conf and changed it to airo, then recreated all the connections, but it still won't activate. I'll try it again with the aironet_cs and see what happens.
 
I'm sorry...I'm not trying to be difficult, I just am very new at this and am trying to get it to work.
Click to expand...

He's talking to me, I'm the one quibbling over semantics. And if RedHat hacked together wireless support and had the wireless cards all named eth* I do think that's a problem, because once the wlan support is officially in they'll all be named wlan* instead which will confuse people. But that doesn't seem to be the issue here.

Type 'ifconfig -a' and 'iwconfig -a' and see if anything shows up. If you have a DHCP server you may be able to type 'pump eth1' or whatever it's called and get an IP address.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
I'm sorry...I'm not trying to be difficult, I just am very new at this and am trying to get it to work.
Click to expand...

He's talking to me, I'm the one quibbling over semantics. And if RedHat hacked together wireless support and had the wireless cards all named eth* I do think that's a problem, because once the wlan support is officially in they'll all be named wlan* instead which will confuse people. But that doesn't seem to be the issue here.

Type 'ifconfig -a' and 'iwconfig -a' and see if anything shows up. If you have a DHCP server you may be able to type 'pump eth1' or whatever it's called and get an IP address.
Click to expand...
Ok, here are some outputs: (keep in mind I have eth0 running (so I can make this post!))

'ifconfig -a':
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:9F:0D:68:2F
inet addr:10.1.17.156 Bcast:10.1.19.255 Mask:255.255.252.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1498 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:282 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:291407 (284.5 Kb) TX bytes:62999 (61.5 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xe800

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:40:96:59:F2:19
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:83 errors:16808 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:16808
TX packets:6 errors:6 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:6
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:6331 (6.1 Kb) TX bytes:1980 (1.9 Kb)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:159 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:159 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:11218 (10.9 Kb) TX bytes:11218 (10.9 Kb)

from 'iwconfig': (if I do a '-a' it won't work)
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"HTSSIENA"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412GHz Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Bit Rate=11Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=0/65535
Retry limit:16 RTS thr: off Fragment thr: off
Encryption key: off
Power Management😱ff
Link Quality:19/10 Signal level:-49 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:8640 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:34040 Missed beacon:0

If I try the "pump" command, it tells me the command is not found.

Edited out smilies caused by output
 
Try dhcpcd, if that's not installed either you'll have to install a DHCP client.

You should be able to use ifconfig to assign and IP and see if any traffic will even go across. 'ifconfig eth1 <ip address> netmask <netmask> up' should be all you need to get started.
 
At this point, the card is definitely recognized and on the interface the OS is expecting. All you need to do is set the encryption key (if needed) and get an address with DHCP. If you want to be hardcore, you can use iwconfig and dhcpcd to do this, but it should be easier to use the RH Internet Configuration Tool. Again, to avoid possible complications, I'd shut down eth1 before reconfiguring it with an "ifconfig eth1 down". That should do it...
 
Posting wirelessly from Redhat!!!

Here's what I ended up doing:

I removed all references to the wireless connection in the Network Configuration applet. I then manually did an iwconfig eth1 essid any and it discovered my settings. I then added it back in to the Network Configuration devices. Then I did a dhclient and it went out and grabbed an ip address. I'm not sure which (if any) steps I could have left out, but it's working now. Of course, once I turn it off and back on again that could be a different story. 🙂 Thanks for all the help and suggestions!
 
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