Problem connecting to WiFi

[Alejandro Imass]

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 1:53 AM, Chris F.A. Johnson
<chris-E7bvbYbpR6jSUeElwK9/Pw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
[...]

>
> iwconfig gives:
>
> wlan0  IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"Douchbag Express"
>  Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
>       Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:1C:DF:CF:39:5C
>       Bit Rate=36 Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=-121 dBm
>       RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B
>       Power Management:off
>       Link Quality:42/100  Signal level:-69 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
>       Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>       Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
>

If the ESSID you are effectively trying to connect to is "Douchbag
Express" then from the results above you are in fact associated to the
AP and with a decent signal level.

So iwconfig is the first step in associating the device to the
network, much like plugging in to a switch or hub...

The next step is for the AP (or some other device on that network) to
give you an IP or set one manually yourself. So you still need
ifconfig and other tools like dhclient to configure the network
interface.

ifconfig wlan0 and see what you get. If you have an IP on wlan0 then
it probably means everything is OK and maybe you have a routing table
conflict between your cable NIC and your WiFi NIC. Do you by any
chance have a network cable plugged in to a local networks at the same
time you are trying to connect through the WiFi interface?

If you don't have an ip, you could manually try dhclient wlan0 and see
what happens. If you have access to the AP/router you could also see
what is going on by looking at the status and logs of the AP.

Also, while you do this it maybe wise to kill your GUI set-up tool.

I don't have that much experience with Mandriva but when it was
Mandrake I remember they used Gnome. If so, can you tell me if
drakonnect is the default network manager tool in Mandriva and that
you don't have Gnome's nm-applet also running??

--
Alejandro Imass
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