Installed Xubuntu & now wireless cannot get my IP address

[αdαmsκι]

My laptop was getting clunky and so I've removed Ubuntu 9.04 and Windows XP in favour of Xubuntu 9.10. Everything seems to be OK, but I cannot get the computer connected to the 'net using the wifi. I've installed the Linksys WPC54G wireless card using ndiswrapper and that seems to work because I can see the wireless network. However, when I try to connect to the wireless network, the wicd manager gives me the error "Connection Failed: Unable to Get IP Address". The problem remains when I try to connect using the Network Manager, although that doesn't give me an error message.

Does anyone have any hints on how to solve the problem? Ta.

[Tewdric]

It probbaly doesn't know where to look for the default  gateway - lots of ideas here:

[SOLVED] Unable to get wireless LAN working in Ubuntu 9.10 - LinuxQuestions.org

[αdαmsκι]

My wifi is now working, but I'm not sure how I got to this stage . Partly I followed the information in this guide to wireless networking, which then lead me to a guide about WPA, so thanks for pointing me towards the LinuxQuestions.org. However, on following some of the instructions from those guides I was getting errors, so I'm not sure why the wifi should be working . I've not rebooted the machine since it started working, so that'll be the next test.....

Actually, what finally seemed to kick Xubuntu into life was placing an Ubuntu 9.10 liveCD into the CD drive and that threat seemed to be enough to convince Xubuntu to behave .

I've used Ubuntu for a number of years and I much prefer working with Ubuntu compared to Windows because everything just seems to work better. However, I start to wonder if Ubuntu / Xubuntu is worth the faff after a day spent trying to get the wifi working.

[pcolbeck]

It probbaly doesn't know where to look for the default  gateway - lots of ideas here:

You don't use a default gateway until you have an IP address, you cant. DHCP is a local broadcast. You get default gateway in the same reply as the IP address.

[αdαmsκι]

So I rebooted the machine this morning and the wireless is again not working  . When I try to connect using the wicd connection manager I get a message saying Connection Failed: Unable to Get IP Address, but it then shows me connected to an odd IP address, which in the screenshot is 169.254.102.243 but it's also "connected" to 169.254.213.23. I can then ping that particular IP address, but I've no idea why, or where, that odd IP address is appearing. And it still means I'm not connected wireless. Arrrggghhh!

Does anyone got any hints on what the hell's going off?!?

[ian]

The 169.xxx.xxx.xxx address is the private address you are defaulting to - usually because your system isn't getting a DHCP-assigned IP address. There's plenty of reasons for that to happen, but try switching off your DHCP client and giving the machine a static address (192.168.0.200 or somesuch depending on the range you use).

If you don't get the IP address, then you won't get the gateway details, as pcolbeck mentions, and your machine is essentially on its lonesome.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

As Ian says, the '169' type address is a Zeroconf address - what happens is that the machine does not get a DHCP address and uses one of these Zeroconf addresses.

My suspicion is that your wireless access point or ADSL router is using MAC address locking - ie. it will only give out DHCP addresses to known MAC addresses which have been pre-entered. Now, your laptop's MAC address should not change if you change to another version of Ubuntu. But maybe somehow it has.
On a DHCP server running on a Linux box I would advocate looking at the log files - on an access poitn do you get any configuration or troubleshooting information from its web management interface?

On the Ubuntu side, look at the log files using something like:
sudo tail -f /var/log/messages
you should see some messages about DHCP leases being requested


(sorry to Ubuntu heads if /var/log/messages is not the system log - it is on any other Linux system...)

[pcolbeck]

Run iwconfig it should tell you if you are actually associated with the AP.

[αdαmsκι]

iwconfig says I'm not associated with the AP:

Code: [Select]

adamski@laptop:~$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any 
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B   
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
I'll start working through the ideas from ian & Scum, too.

[pcolbeck]

That means that you havent connected to the AP at a wireless level. Either it hasn't tried to or it has failed authentication. No point in looking at DHCP until you associate.

[αdαmsκι]

I gave up messing around with settings I don't understand, so I've reinstalled Xubuntu. Things are now working and, touch wood, they'll continue like this when I reboot the machine. This time Xubuntu automatically figured out what my wireless card was and I didn't need to use ndiswrapper. The final test will be a reboot. Wish me luck.......


Edit: The laptop has been rebooted and the wireless is still working. I'm scared to get too excited in case it all messes up again, but for the moment it seems good. Thanks for all your ideas.

[ian]

I gave up messing around with settings I don't understand, so I've reinstalled Xubuntu. Things are now working and, touch wood, they'll continue like this when I reboot the machine. This time Xubuntu automatically figured out what my wireless card was and I didn't need to use ndiswrapper. The final test will be a reboot. Wish me luck.......


Edit: The laptop has been rebooted and the wireless is still working. I'm scared to get too excited in case it all messes up again, but for the moment it seems good. Thanks for all your ideas.

I had shedloads of issues with Ubuntu (and Linux in general) and wireless NICs. When they work, they work, when they don't, oh woes.

I gave up on my old Laptop attempt to get Ubuntu and a wireless connection to agree. I did finally get Mandriva to work, though when that upgraded itself, it killed the wireless. Seems fine if I keep to the 2008 version, even though later versions claim better support for the chipset I have.

[Tewdric]

It probbaly doesn't know where to look for the default  gateway - lots of ideas here:

You don't use a default gateway until you have an IP address, you cant. DHCP is a local broadcast. You get default gateway in the same reply as the IP address.

Doh!