Belkin N150 router wireless light won't come on

[Walter Dnes]

  I'm trying to connect to a Belkin N150 wireless router with a netbook
running Gentoo.  I know that that the netbook's wireless works, because
I've surfed the web at a Toronto Public Library free wifi hotspot.  My
home setup.  I have an ST546 4-port ADSL modem/router connected to my
ISP.  My home LAN is 192.168.123.248/29 (range from .248 to .255).  The
external interface is 192.168.123.252/29, and internally it's
192.168.2.1/24.  The Belkin's yellow ethernet port is connected to the
ST546.  For testing, my netbook is connected to the N150 via the wired
jack as 192.168.2.2/24.

  ___________________________
 |  ST 546 192.168.123.254  |
 -|-----------------------|--   ______________________
  |                       |     |netbook 192.168.2.2 |
  |                       |     --|-------------------
  |                       |       |
_____________________    _|_______|_____________
| PC 192.168.123.251|    | WAN 192.168.123.252 |
---------------------    | LAN 192.168.2.1     | N150
                         -----------------------

The wired setup works perfectly; I can ssh from the netbook to the PC,
and from the PC to the netbook.  Both machines can surf the web, etc.
My problem is the wireless setup.

I've manually set up the WPA-PSK as per the instructions.  I've enabled
DHCP with range of 1 address 192.168.2.9, since I only expect the one
client.  I've enabled b/g/n (my netbook is b/g). but I'll cut it down to
g-only once I figure things out.  For my passphrase I've enabled all
printable characters from ascii 32 to 126.  I've turned off the Belkin's
firewall and netbook's firewall while testing.  No difference.  I've
changed the essid to "linksys1234" to confuse the enemy. It shows up in
a wlan0 scan like so...

Cell 02 - Address: 00:22:75:BA:24:BB
          Channel:4
          Frequency:2.427 GHz (Channel 4)
          Quality=70/70  Signal level=-32 dBm
          Encryption key:on
          ESSID:"linksys1234"
          Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
                    24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
          Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
          Mode:Master
          Extra:tsf=000000035a59826f
          Extra: Last beacon: 1122ms ago
          IE: Unknown: 000B6C696E6B73797331323334
          IE: Unknown: 010882848B9624B0486C
          IE: Unknown: 030104
          IE: Unknown: 2A0100
          IE: Unknown: 2F0100
          IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
              Group Cipher : TKIP
              Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
              Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
          IE: Unknown: 32048C129860
          IE: Unknown: DD090010180200F0010000
          IE: WPA Version 1
              Group Cipher : TKIP
              Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP

  My startup script is similar to the successful script I ran at the
library hotspot.  It goes like so...

#!/bin/bash
sudo /sbin/rmmod ath5k
sudo /sbin/modprobe ath5k
sudo /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 restart
sudo /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up
sudo /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid any channel auto
sudo /usr/bin/killall -3 wpa_supplicant
sudo /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -B -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.home
sudo /sbin/dhcpcd -C resolv.conf -C mtu wlan0

When I run it, dhcpcd fails like so...

wlan0: dhcpcd 4.0.15 starting
wlan0: waiting for carrier
wlan0: timed out

The config file /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.home (generated with the help
of wpa_passphrase) contains...

network={
scan_ssid=1
  #psk=63 character gobbledygook passphrase
  psk=a long series of hex numbers
}

To generate a gobbledygook passphrase, I use...
head -c 2048 /dev/urandom | tr -dc \ -~ | head -c 63

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
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