Wireless Not Working Now

[SyntheticShield]

Okay, I had my wireless card working (D-Link DWL-G650), I used the madwifi driver and all was good.

Today I decide I want to roam around some. I installed a new firmware upgrade in the wireless router that allowed me to up the transmit power so I wanted to see how far I can roam around.

I plug in my wireless card and it just sits there, one light blinking, like it would if it wasnt seeing the network. So I pull up the CLI and check my configuration and I type iwconfig and get this:

[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.

So I think, okay, maybe I have to turn it on, so I type ifconfig ath0 up and I get this:

[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig ath0 up
ath0: unknown interface: No such device

I try ifconfig wifi0 up and get this:

[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig wifi0 up
wifi0: unknown interface: No such device

Im not sure whats going on, it seems strange that it would quit working, Ive used it several times. I cant see how a firmware upgrade in the router would cause an issue. But just the same I have made sure the transmitter was on and everything is set up as it should be in the router.

I dont think its the router though because Im not even seeing the card on the laptop. Anyone have any ideas?

[SyntheticShield]

Has there been a recent kernel upgrade? If so, how do I get the madwifi version that will work with it? I tried reinstalling madwifi last night, but because its already there Yum just says 'nothing to do'.

[Seve]

Hello Scotty:
I don't have to contend with wireless at the moment. :D
However, a couple of questions
Which kernel are you now running
uname -r
and
do you have the livna repo enabled?

Seve

[SyntheticShield]

Back when I installed wireless for the first time the kernel was:

Installed Packages
kernel.i686 2.6.18-1.2869.fc6 installed
kernel.i686 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 installed

I couldnt remember the command to check the kernel but when I booted up I do believe it was something like 2895?? maybe. Definately not what I had when I installed the first time.

Now, when you get to the point in FC in the boot process where you can select which kernel or system you wanted to boot I hit enter so I could select one but only the two that are listed above were showing. Again, I couldnt remember the command to check the kernel version so I cant confirm at the moment which kernel is running.

As well, I do have the livna repo installed, I did double check that last night, I pulled up my first post on getting wireless working and went through every step and made sure that everything was as it should be. One thing I did find, however, was that my /etc/modprob.conf file no longer contained:

alias ath0 ath_pci
options ath_pci autocreate=sta
alias wifi0 ath_pci

so I added that back in, but it didnt seem to help anything, I was still getting the ath0: unknown interface: No such device response. I even rebooted the machine a couple times, despite not having to since installing FC and getting it all settled. Nonetheless I rebooted and that didnt help either.

If it werent for the fact it was telling me that its an unknown interface and no such device, I would suspect the firmware upgrade in the router, but there's just no way I am aware of that a router upgrade could wipe out my settings on my laptop, furthermore I still have internet access over the ethernet connection.

[SyntheticShield]

Well it would seem that the kernel has indeed been updated. Crap. How long before there will be a madwifi version to work with the kernel or is there anyway that I can get it working in the mean time?

Im not so sure Im going to like that kernel update thing if its going to mess with my wireless connection everytime.

[root@localhost ~]# uname -r
2.6.19-1.2895.fc6

[Seve]

Hello Scotty:
Livna has the kmod-madwifi module available for your kernel, it was released on Jan 21
http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/6/i386/repodata/
I would think that if you have the livna repo enabled then while booted into the 2.6.19-1.2895.fc6
yum install kmod-madwifi
should do it.

BTW, the default for yum is to keep two kernels installed, when a newer kernel is released the oldest one will be removed.
You can change this behaviour if you like by
editing your /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/installonlyn.conf
and set
tokeep=2
to
tokeep=X

X should always be >=2

As well, if you are happy with how a current kernel is working you do not need to install the newest one. As each time you update/change a kernel any modules [e.g. kmod -XXXX] will also have to installed to match the kernel.
You can block the update of newer kernels by adding to your
/etc/yum.conf
under the [main] section
exclude=kernel*

Seve

[SyntheticShield]

Thank you Seve, I guess that is something I'll have to get used to. I do have the livna repo enabled, I double and triple checked that because I tried to run yum install madwifi to see if there were any updates, though I didnt try kmod-madwifi, perhaps that is what I was doing wrong.

I think I will disable the kernel auto updates, hopefully that way when I do update the kernel there will be updated software already. Thanks for the info on how to get that done.

[JN4OldSchool]

ummm, just a thought but you might want to try "yum update madwifi" instead of install. If the package is already installed then even if there is an upgraded version I believe yum will report back nothing to do. If it were me (and I know, it's not...) I would disable ALL auto updates and just manualy do it every other to third day. Just update everything at once.

[SyntheticShield]

Ohh, well, holy cow, I didnt know you could do yum update.

Update, every other to third day? Do things update that often? Wow. Thats a good thing in a major way, but it could be a royal pain in a situation like this.

[JN4OldSchool]

I have an 11.76GB / install. This is just the OS and apps. VMWare files are in my /share which is not included. I will have between 30-200MB of updates around every third day. Yeah, it's crazy. Just open the terminal and do a yum -y update. This way all the kernel mods get updated with the kernel. Everything is kept together.

[SyntheticShield]

My notebook is ever growing with all these valuable commands all of you are giving me to use. I might someday become a bona fide FC6 user yet.

[JN4OldSchool]

lol, just in time for Fedora 8? :D

[SyntheticShield]

The wireless is back up, indeed it was the kmod-madwifi needed and once that was updated all was good.

After I got that done, I accessed my router, which by default is set to a transmit power of a paultry 28mW and I turned that sucker up to 100mW and I got a spectacular signal now. My router is up in the attic and my office is on the opposite end of the house so signal strength here was weak at best. Now that I can turn it up to 251mW, I dont think I will have any more connection issues as far as signal strength goes.

My Link Quality went from liek 2/94 from iwconfig up to 15/94, pretty darn cool if you ask me. Oh, and get this, my router is powered by Linux.