Wifi Sees Networks, Won't connect

[constantina]

For a week I have been grappling with Fedora 10 and now Fedora 12. With Fedora 12 I installed the Broadcom Drivers through yum utility. Now my wifi light is on and it detects the networks within range. However it refuses to connect. I have read all I can possibly read and have not been able to get a consise solution. I am posting in hopes of getting some help. I have had to do everything through the eth0 wired interface and that has been working fine. But I would like to solve my wireless issue.


Results from lspci

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)


results from iwlist eth1 scan

Cell 02 - Address: 00:21:7C:30:5A:09
ESSID:"ScotlandGates"
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:5/5 Signal level:-10 dBm Noise level:-93 dBm
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (2) : CCMP TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s

I found it strange that in the below entry for my eth1 it lists an inet6 yet has no normal (ipv4) entry.

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1F:E1:C3:A8:2D
inet6 addr: fe80::21f:e1ff:fec3:a82d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:61 errors:357 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:1553
TX packets:108 errors:14 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:8613 (8.4 KiB) TX bytes:24667 (24.0 KiB)
Interrupt:17 Base address:0xc000

My wireless card does not show up in network manager but the contents of my ifcfg-Auto_ScotlanGates file is:
DEVICE=eth1
ESSID="ScotlandGates"
MODE=Ad-Hoc
KEY_MGMT=WPA-PSK
WPA_ALLOW_WPA=yes
CIPHER_PAIRWISE=NONE
CIPHER_GROUP=TKIP
TYPE=Wireless
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
DEFROUTE=yes
PEERDNS=yes
PEERROUTES=yes
NAME="Auto ScotlandGates"
UUID=""
ONBOOT=yes


I have run wireshark to do a packet capture of it trying to connect and I find that the last few entries are a DHCP Discover with source address of 0.0.0.0 for the source ip address and the destination address of 255.255.255.255. Seems important but not sure where to make the correction.

My ifcfg* files on my system are:

./etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
./etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-Auto_ScotlandGates
./etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-lo
./etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/ifcfg-eth0
./etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0

[stoat]

I have read all I can possibly read and have not been able to get a consise solution.You may have read too much stuff.

Hello constantina,

I don't really know what's wrong here. Sorry. But normally for the BCM4312 chipset, all that's necessary is to install the broadcom-wl driver and then restart NetworkManager. That's it. Did you do anything else? For example, many people still cling to the old Network Configuration utility (aka and started with system-config-network) and enter connection information there. They also often tinker in its text config files. All of that is fine if you intend to establish and manage your wireless connection manually with terminal commands or scripts. But if you intend to use NetworkManager, that stuff is not only unnecessary, it also can stop NetworkManager from working. It's also no longer necessary to create a wpa_supplicant.conf file. NetworkManager handles all of that stuff.

I would try this next... Open the old Network Configuration utility...su
system-config-networkIf you have a wireless connection in that, then "Edit" it and check the box "Controlled by NetworkManager" and uncheck (that's right, uncheck) "Activate device when computer starts". It's also a good idea to disable the network service...su
chkconfig network offNetworkManager will start the network service when it needs it. Anway...

Now reboot and check the NetworkManager panel applet icon for available networks (left-click it). Try to connect. No promises, but it really is not supposed to be difficult with the BCM4312 and broadcom-wl

[Dan]

Uhm ...

Ok. I'll get the stupid questions out of the way.

Are you sure these are open networks that you are actually granted access to?

[plasmonics]

The popular way is to use NetworkManager. The program name is "nm-applet". This is usually started by default.

I see you are trying to use the ifcfg method. This is also what I use. If you want to use this method here is a guide (http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=235989&highlight=wpa2+ifcfg).

[constantina]

Thank you all for responding. I rena into another very frustrating thing. When I woke up this morning, after I had finally gotten my wifi light to come on, I woke up, booted my computer and now all of a sudden my card is not even being recognized again! Argh. I reinstalled broadcom-wl and that did not help. Now I will re-install Fedora 12, install broadcom-wl and then try to follow the good advice above that you all gave me and see where I get....I am going C@zeeeeeeee with this!

[stoat]

Now I will re-install Fedora 12, install broadcom-wl...Okay, but I recommend that you install the broadcom-wl driver this way. Install the RPM Fusion repos...http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
Check your kernel arch...uname -r
For the i686 and x86_64 kernels, install broadcom-wl this way...su
yum install kmod-wl
For the PAE kernel, install broadcom-wl this way...su
yum install kmod-wl-PAEThen reboot or restart NetworkManager and check the panel applet icon for available networks.

[constantina]

Thank you Stoat! I really apreciate this. I will add this to my admin notes for getting wireless going. I ended up re-installing Fedora because I saw this message after my re-endevor. I finally got it working...and not sure what was giving me the trouble.... In the end I ran the following:



rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

yum makecache

yum install broadcom-wl

reboot



This Linux admin thing is very new to me, but I wonder if I was having problems because I was making my local lan domain computername.ScotlandYard (I have a silly theme going. This time when I installed Fedora I left it as localhost.localdomain. I thought I could name my local domain anything. Is this true?

..and I noticed that the strange symptom of my eth1 ifconfig output now has an inetaddress rather than just an inet6 addr: . This must mean something but it was all very related I am sure. Fi anyone could explain that I would really appreciate that. (See my first post of this thread and my eth1 had no inet addr! Just inet6 addr....

Thanks!

[constantina]

I am frustrated. After having my wifi going for a while, I was attempting to get my totem to play encrypted DVDs. After re-booting my Wifi went down again!!! Arg. The card isn't even recognized.

So i did some troubleshooting steps. Some of the below being the most basic.

1) Made sure that I actually had the wifi turned on by the hardware switch on the left side of my system (It was)
2) Made sure that my wifi was enabled in the BIOS (It was)
3) Reinstalled the broadcom-wl driver by my most recent successful method (It was already installed, and "Nothing to do")
4) Made a decision: "Do not reinstall again. It is highly impractical and not a real-world option to flash everything over when something goes wrong)"

I have 32 not 64 bit architecture:

My Kernel Arch is:
2.6.31.12-174.2.3.fc12.i686

I am not sure what to do now to get this going. According to my OS the broadcom-wl is already installed, and yet my card is not even being recognized. What would a sys admin do next? Any ideas?

OKay.... This is my follow-up below (I editted this post because I found a fix resolution)

I ended up using

yum reinstall broadcom-wl



I hope I won't have to do this every time! That's crazy....