Wireless networking in Ubuntu (Hardy Heron)

[Charlotte]

Oh poo.  I've just tried to get my old laptop up and running with a clean install of Hardy and I can't seem to get the wireless to work.

I made sure that wireless comes on by default in the BIOS settings, but still no good - although the wireless LED comes on, Ubuntu doesn't detect it automatically.

The help pages say I should check for device recognition by going System > Preferences > Hardware Information, but there is no option for "Hardware Information" in that menu.  I typed "sudo 1shw -c network" into a terminal like it told me to check for a driver, but I'm buggered if I know what all that guff it gave me actually means.  I'm not nearly as savvy about this stuff as I'd have hoped.

I suspect that I will have to install a driver using ndiswrapper, but that involves installing stuff and without the wifi, that's going to be a pain.

Argh.  Help!

[bobajobrob]

What's your wireless chipset? E.g.

Code: [Select]

$ lspci | grep Network
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

Shows I have an Intel 3945 wireless chipset. Post the whole output of lspci if unsure.

[pcolbeck]

Wireless in Hardy Heron works less well than it did in the last version of Ubuntu for several wireless chipsets. Have a look over at the Ubuntu forums. You may well have to use an Ndis wrapper where you didn't have to before.

[tubbycyclist]

I have the same network card on an HP laptop - IPW3945 is supported natively in Hardy (using the iwl3945 driver) but I found Gnome's NetworkManager to be poor - switched to using wicd and wifi is much improved.

Might be worth looking at those options before looking at ndiswrapper.

EDIT: could be worth enabling backports in Update Manager, seem to remember there was a problem with the initial driver.

[Charlotte]

Phil was over last night (back from L'poo uni) and together, we tried to get it working.

No problems with a wired connection to the Virgin box - it all gets online fine.  No updates needed, either.  But try as we might, we couldn't get the wireless to see the nextwork.  Gawd knows if the wireless card is actually working.  Phil tried some BASH goodness to see if it was up and running, but because I have 1394 (or whatever the firewire is) we couldn't tell.

Oh - and when I type "su" and my password into the terminal, it tells me that I've got it wrong when I'm 100% that I haven't.  Ver' odd indeed.

It still won't bring up "System > Preferences > Hardware Information" because there is no option for "Hardware Information" in that menu!  So I can't see how I go about looking for the wireless card.

I think I may do better downloading a Gutsy ISO and seeing if that works - what do you think?

[border-rider]

Oh - and when I type "su" and my password into the terminal, it tells me that I've got it wrong when I'm 100% that I haven't.  Ver' odd indeed.

This ?

Hardy Heron

[thing1]

Oh - and when I type "su" and my password into the terminal, it tells me that I've got it wrong when I'm 100% that I haven't.  Ver' odd indeed.

Does it say "Authentication error. Sorry"?
This is because Ubuntu has non-root usage of su disabled. Idea is is you put sudo before every dang root command. If this gets tiresome, you can run "sudo su".

Never used wifi on ubuntu [except on a work laptop which was pre-configured by our lovely admins] so can't help much with that I is afraid.

[Charlotte]

This ?

Hardy Heron

Yeah, I think so.

Is this the root of all my worries?  (pun not even attempted...)

Does it say "Authentication error. Sorry"?

I don't think so.  I think it just tells me I have the password wrong, but I can't remember now.

Anyway - do I need to reformat the hard drive?  Is it because it's still a Windows disk?

I can't mount my NTFS external hard drive either, which is annoying.  Does that need to be "ext" or whatever it's called?

[border-rider]

I think all your issues may well be related to the sudo problem.  Without that you can't do anything useful.  The fix is dead easy though. 

Windows drives should mount automatically.  No need to change anything.  I think ljerams had the same problem and I think it was the same cause.

[Charlotte]

Right - I shall do that funky thang with System > Administration > Network ... Network Settings dialog Hosts tab >unlock >- Add or Delete.

Cheers 

[Phil]

Yeah, that's the one.  The error message was 'cannot resolve host: <your laptop>'. 

[bobajobrob]

Oh - and when I type "su" and my password into the terminal, it tells me that I've got it wrong when I'm 100% that I haven't.  Ver' odd indeed.

There's no root password set up in ubuntu by default. You can use sudo most of the time. If you need to be root, use sudo su. You can then set the root password with passwd if you need to.

Edit: what thing1 said.

[bobajobrob]

It still won't bring up "System > Preferences > Hardware Information" because there is no option for "Hardware Information" in that menu!  So I can't see how I go about looking for the wireless card.

lspci | grep Network or just lspci from a terminal. Then type iwconfig to see if it's working:

Code: [Select]

$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"taco"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:0F:66:90:A0:03   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=67/100  Signal level=-66 dBm  Noise level=-98 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0


[ian]

Encouraged by this very forum, I binned XP on my old 'kitchen' laptop and installed Hardy Heron. Now, I confess I'm a Mac user and this may have made me mentally lazy (because I have to say that my MacBook does indeed 'just work') but I do have some dim recall of using Unix in my university days. Anyway, installation went fine and up popped the Gnome desktop. I'm in business, thought I.

Not so. Wireless networking isn't networking for me also. The laptop has a PCMCIA Linksys WPC54G (7.1) card which ought to work (as far I as could gather from the inertweb - though it apparently needs MadWifi, which I'm assuming is pre-installed, but I'm not smart enough to tell). It's recognized as containing an Atheros chipset but a message about 'reduced functionality drivers' pops up on first installation and then never comes back. Evidently that 'reduced functionality' isn't enough to link to my network. I couldn't work out any kind of 'device manager', as per Charlotte's earlier comment. It seems to create an 'ath0' device (and not 'wlan0') but as far as I can tell it doesn't see any networks.

In a vain attempt to be clever I uncovered some blurb about ndiswrapper, so I copied the instructions and the Window's driver to a USB drive. This may have been a useful strategy had the USB ports worked, but they didn't. Nothing mounted.  To be fair, this laptop doesn't need USB ports so that's not a biggy, but it was a pain in the rear.

So, some faff later, I wire it to my little office server and copy over the files on a wired network (which works fine). Followed the instructions. "Invalid Driver" it exclaimed.

I think it has me beat too. I tried the old IT standby and swore at the computer for a while and gave it a shake. No joy. Do I give up and admit I'm Bill Gates's bitch and reinstall Windows XP or is there something I'm missing? The network uses WPA encryption, but I plug in my details etc. and I figure it ought to work.

iwlist ath0 gives "No Scan Results". No so, because I wouldn't be sending this otherwise.

[border-rider]

System>administration>hardware drivers.

Anything there about using restricted drivers ?

[bobajobrob]

iwlist ath0 gives "No Scan Results". No so, because I wouldn't be sending this otherwise.

What does iwconfig give you?

[ian]

iwlist ath0 gives "No Scan Results". No so, because I wouldn't be sending this otherwise.

What does iwconfig give you?

ath0   IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457 GHz  Access Point: Not Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/94  Signal level=-96 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

System>administration>hardware drivers.

Anything there about using restricted drivers ?

Tells me I'm using proprietary drivers and if they leap out of the machine and bite my knees off then it's my fault and not Ubuntu's. Not mention of restricted drivers - but possibly this is what it meant - the message only jumped up the first time I installed Ubuntu.

[bobajobrob]

Have you seen this thread? Looks like people have had some success with ndiswrapper.

[Woofage]

If all else fails there's this

[bobajobrob]

I have the same network card on an HP laptop - IPW3945 is supported natively in Hardy (using the iwl3945 driver) but I found Gnome's NetworkManager to be poor - switched to using wicd and wifi is much improved.

NetworkManager works fine for me, using Ubuntu 8.04 with an ipw3945. When I resume my laptop from suspend to ram, it connects to my router in 5 seconds or so and stays connected. All the features seem to work properly.

[ian]

Have you seen this thread? Looks like people have had some success with ndiswrapper.

Sadly, only seems to work for Broadcom chipsets. The v7 cards use Atheros apparently. ndiswrapper spits out that driver in disgust. I tried madwifi and despite successfully following all the instructions I am still faced with "ath0: no scan results". Which is essentially where I started, only by now I've run out of expletives.

Shame, Ubuntu looked nice and shiny. Not terribly keen to buy a new card unless it's very cheap and pretty much guaranteed compatible with Hardy (alas, just gave two old cards away, damned be my generosity) as it seems a bit wasteful. Open to further suggestions / new expletives to use. I seem to be out of ideas.

I may just have to kiss and make up with Bill and clean install XP. It's all a plot to make me buy another Mac...

[bobajobrob]

Have a look at this list and scroll down to Wireless network adapters. You can probably pick a card up off ebay for a couple of quid.

[Woofage]

Have a look at this list and scroll down to Wireless network adapters. You can probably pick a card up off ebay for a couple of quid.

If all else fails there's this

Not a couple of quid, but 8 and a half, so still not bad .