how to activate wifi?

[nobleman_james]

i found out that iw works well in the terminal to list availible connections...but i would like to know a command to connect disconnect from the connections in the terminal cant find it anywhere...i can only find how to scan for connections...lame

[AdamW]

As I said, cnetworkmanager would be the way to do that.

[randyd]

I have a similar problem.

Well, the iwconfig man page says we should be able to use "iwconfig eth0 ap 00:60:1D:01:23:45" to actually associate with an Access point, but when I try, I get an error mesage.

[root@unknown001ff3ce7028 etc]# iwconfig eth1 ap 00:25:9C:3B:EF:F9
Error for wireless request "Set AP Address" (8B14) :
    SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument.

The AP is unsecured (open authentication) so I didn't set up any keys. wpa_supplicant is running but has no configured credentials (yet).

Other relevant facts:
Distro is Fedora 10
Platform is a Macbook Pro (Aluminum body)
Kernel is 2.6.27.35-170.2.94.fc10.i686
lspci shows that my BCM4328 is using wl as the driver
lsmod shows no "bc43" or "ssb" or "ndiswrapper" modules loaded.
lsmod does show "wl" is loaded
I built wl.ko from source I downloaded from http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
I am hand editing /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* by hand
I have disabled NetworkManager using chkconfig
"iwlist eth1 scanning" shows me the expected APs so the hardware is working

What else can I share that would help point to the problem?

[randyd]

I tried cnetworkmanager. It required that NetworkManager be on, so I enabled it.

Next I tried listing the available networksThen when I tried
[root@localhost network-scripts]# cnetworkmanager -C WWT_OAP --unprotected
cnetworkmanager 0.8.4 - Command Line Interface for NetworkManager
Could not provide settings service, another applet is running (pid 3416)

So, I can't use cnetworkmanager if nm-applet is running? How do I disable nm-applet?

[randyd]

More information about NetworkManager. After enabling NetworkManager and rebooting, I found these message in /var/log/messages:

Oct  9 12:08:25 unknown001ff3ce7028 NetworkManager: <info>  (eth1): device state change: 1 -> 2
Oct  9 12:08:25 unknown001ff3ce7028 NetworkManager: <info>  (eth1): preparing device.
Oct  9 12:08:25 unknown001ff3ce7028 NetworkManager: <info>  (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 2).
Oct  9 12:08:25 unknown001ff3ce7028 NetworkManager: <WARN>  nm_device_wifi_disable_encryption(): error setting key for device eth1: Invalid argument
Oct  9 12:08:25 unknown001ff3ce7028 NetworkManager: <WARN>  check_one_route(): (eth1) error -34 returned from rtnl_route_del(): Sucess#012
Oct  9 12:08:25 unknown001ff3ce7028 NetworkManager: <info>  (eth1): device state change: 2 -> 3
Oct  9 12:08:25 unknown001ff3ce7028 NetworkManager: <info>  (eth1): supplicant interface state:  starting -> ready

Any help?

[AdamW]

randyd: if you'd prefer to use the old-style network configuration rather than NetworkManager, then iwconfig and wpa_supplicant's configuration files and interface apps (wpa_cli) would be the right way to interact with the system directly. I don't know why you got that iwconfig error in that case, though.

you can kill nm_applet . to stop it running automatically each time you start GNOME, you'd have to disable it from the list you get by doing foot menu -> system -> preferences -> startup applications (it's called 'Network Manager' in that list).

[randyd]

Thanks AdamW.

[randyd]

I have a slight preference for using the "tools of the future" (i.e. NetworkManager, right?) but in essence, I don't care whether I do it "old school" or using a crowbar. I suspect much of my problem is that I am mixing the two methods because I don't know what I am doing. What is your favorite NetworkManager tutorial page? I have found many... too many probably. Likewise, is there a good tutorial on using cnetworkmanager? There is no man page and the -h descriptions are only useful if things are working, not if they are not working.

nm_applet isn't running until I try to connect using cnetworkmanager. So killing it doesn't help:

[randyd@localhost ~]$ cnetworkmanager --unprotected -C NESPOT
cnetworkmanager 0.8.4 - Command Line Interface for NetworkManager
Could not provide settings service, another applet is running (pid 3400)
[randyd@localhost ~]$ ps -ef | grep 3400
randyd    3400  3100  0 09:03 ?        00:00:00 nm-applet --sm-disable
randyd    4229  3579  0 09:22 pts/0    00:00:00 grep 3400

[nobleman_james]

f7 slimply does not work on the lenovo s10 it just dosnt ever finish booting up and just hangs...i wonder if any of this harder in these netbooks is causing all my issues because we all no f7 and f11 work like they do on my desktops just not on my net book or others laptops....

[AdamW]

randyd: if you just want to use the old-school method and not worry about NetworkManager, disable the NetworkManager service and use system-config-network to configure the connections, then use iwconfig and ifconfig for command-line interaction. I honestly don't know much about cnetworkmanager, only that it exists and it's a console NM client.