[TriLUG] Wireless and Mandriva 2006/2007

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

Mandriva 2007 has a built in native Linux rt2500usb driver for the linksys 
WUSB54G wireless NIC. It creates device rausb0. Unfortunately, it's 
intermittent, glitchy, and often freezes the entire machine. I have no proof 
yet, but I suspect that this rausb0 prevents me from using ndiswrapper plus 
the Windows driver to create a wlan0.

Mandriva 2006 doesn't have the native driver, and it's a 5 minute process to 
use ndiswrapper plus the windows driver to create wlan0, which seems to work 
better than rausb0.

Now I'm at the stage of needing to configure the (Mandriva 
specific) /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 file for encryption, and 
the information is hard to come by. Does anyone have first hand knowledge of 
configuring ifcfg-wlan0 for Mandriva?

Some specific questions:

WIRELESS_ENC_KEY='open s: mypassword' doesn't work for WEP, WPA1 OR WPA2. Why?
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY='restricted s: mypassword' doesn't work either. Why?
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=MYHEX works in WEP, as long as it's the right key.

Last night I could get it to work on WEP identifying all 4 keys (4 
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY statements) as long as key #1 was last. Surprisingly, after 
switching the access point's default key to key 3 and powercycling the access 
point, on the client it was still necessary to place key 1 last of the 4 
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY statements, each of which looked like this:

WIRELESS_ENC_KEY='[1] MYHEX [1]'

Why must #1 be last even though #3 is the default key according to the access 
point?

Overnight I powered down all computers but kept the accesspoint running. In 
the morning bootup, the computer could no longer get an IP, gateway and DNS 
server from dhcp, even though a (different) wired box could get them from 
dhcp, and according to the IPCop firewall on which I keep the leases, there 
were plenty of spare, expired leases ready for use. Last night the setup 
worked through multiple reboots, but this morning it doesn't work at all, 
even if the key 3 WIRELESS_ENC_KEY is placed at the bottom. What could have 
happened overnight?

Of all the things I've worked on in Linux, wireless (especially with 
encryption) is about the most difficult. Hundreds of variables, few good 
diagnostic tools (as far as I know), GUI tools that silently alter config 
files in unacceptable ways, situations where state is dragged around 
sometimes necessitating a reboot after a change, serious distribution and 
version dependencies, and not enough documentation (even though there's 
voluminous documentation, it's still not exactly what's needed).

Anyway, anyone who knows Mandriva's ifcfg-wlan0 syntax, could you please 
explain how it works?

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: 
   * Universal Troubleshooting Process courseware
   * Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist
   * Manager's Guide to Technical Troubleshooting
   * Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
   * Rapid Learning: Secret Weapon of the Successful Technologist

http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore
http://www.troubleshooters.com/utp/tcourses.htm