Wireless Not connecting

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Hopefully I have the correct forum, if feel free to let me know.

I just installed the newest version on to an HP Desktop with wireless built in. I entered everything for the wireless but am not connecting. THe unit works with windows7 so I know it's good. The wireless provider is AT&T, a 2wire device. I must be missing something but unfortunately since this is my first go round with Linux I can't find what it is and not sure if there is any logs to check that might give a hint as to where the problem lies.

Anybody have any suggestions besides the obvious? I've tried multiple attempts and from the router end it also looks like it isn;t even trying to connect.

Thanks,

Geoff

av
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Responses

David Powles's picture Red Hat 25369 points
17 December 2012 8:55 AM

Geoff, this problem is more suited for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Getting Started groups, so I'll assign it to both of those. The Red Hat Customer Portal group is for feedback and questions about this website and community.

Christopher Wawak's picture Red Hat Pro 565 points
17 December 2012 3:37 PM

Geoff,

NetworkManager stores its logs in /var/log/messages, so that's the first place to look for errors.

Can you please confirm the exact HP Desktop model as well as the wireless chipset you're having issues with?
If you're having trouble finding the wireless chipset information, please send the output of the following command:

$ lspci | grep Network
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 04)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 3e)

This information will help the group figure out the next steps. I don't think desktops typically have a Wi-Fi kill switch, but I'd make sure there's no external switch on your desktop that might be disabling wireless.

Also, here is a link to the Deployment Guide for RHEL 6, specifically the wireless configuration section. 

Thanks,

Christopher R Wawak, RHCE
Technical Account Manager - Red Hat Global Support Services 

av Active Contributor 105 points
17 December 2012 8:16 PM

The output is 0a.00.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n

Perhaps since a cable is not connected this is why ony one shows up, not sure. In any case this is an HP h9-1150t desktop. I have never seen a kill switch on this or any other desktop either. The link you sent seem to indicate I should at least see a list of network devices, which I don't. Even so, a manual setup, which is what I had to do during installation, doesn't work, and I know I input correctly, numerous times. by the way our 2wire device is not hidden and can be seen.

A cpuple of things in the log, I see a 'cannot find firmware file 'rtl_nic/rtl8168e-2.fw message, looks lke related to eth0 so perhaps not a big deal since the cable is not connected, not sure. I also see message, 'Networking is enabeled by state file, WIFI, WWAN, WiMAX enabled by radio killswitch; enabled by state file messages. I also see a read connection '2WIRE584' message.

The link to the config isn't something I saw before hand but having fooled a bit previously with a server version I remembered there was a network config here.

Thanks for the help.

Geoff

Once this is working I'd like to figure out if there is a driver for video that will help me with graphics and fill the 21 inch screen I have too.

Christopher Wawak's picture Red Hat Pro 565 points
17 December 2012 10:23 PM

Geoff,

I took a look, and - to the best of my knowlege - it doesn't appear that the BCM43228 chipset is supported under RHEL 6.3. 

Right now, the BCM43228 chipset requires Broadcom's closed-source "STA" wl.ko driver. Due to the proprietary nature of this driver, it is not included or supported under RHEL. It's possible that you can build this driver for your desktop and enable the wireless card, but I have no experience with building or using this driver, so I can't do more than point you in the direction of Broadcom's documentation. Using an unsupported driver could affect the supportability of your system. For more information on how Red Hat handles proprietary drivers, please refer to this knowledge base article.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel, however. The open-source brcmsmac project has included support for the BCM43228 chipset on their to-do list. Once the chipset is supported in the brcmsmac driver, it is possible that the driver could make its way into RHEL.

Finally, if you want to show your support for getting the BCM43228 chipset supported in RHEL, you can open up a support case to create a Request for Enhancement (RFE) if you have a valid support entitlement. For more information on the RFE process, please refer to "The Request for Feature Enhancement (RFE) Process for Red Hat Enterprise Linux".

As far as your display is concerned, it would be best if you opened up a new thread just like you did this this one so we can keep the issues seperate. 

Hope I provided some hints to get you moving forward!

Christopher Wawak, RHCE
Technical Account Manager - Red Hat Global Support Services 

av Active Contributor 105 points
26 December 2012 6:52 PM

If I were to purchase a USB wireless device to use until support for the internal one is released how would I know which one is currently going to work so I'm not either returning devices or wasting time and money.

thanks

Christopher Wawak's picture Red Hat Pro 565 points
28 December 2012 6:08 PM

Geoff,

I don't have specific experience with RHEL and USB Wireless devices, but I'd check the Linux Wireless project's USB Devices wiki page for more information. You'll need to look into the individual drivers on that wiki to see what's supported or what's not supported.

Perhaps someone else has explicit experience with a particular chipset.

 

Christopher Wawak, RHCE
Technical Account Manager - Red Hat Global Support Services 

av Active Contributor 105 points
28 December 2012 8:43 PM

Based on that list it looks like I have an old Netgeat WG111 on hand I can try. It looks like just plugging it in to a USB port and turning on the computer doesn;t give the resuts I was looking for, which was at least turning it on and having a blinking light, so I'm guessing there must be some commands I need to run to activate it. Using the original lspci command it doesn't show so hopefully there is an easy way to get this going and give it a shot.

thanks

geoff

Christopher Wawak's picture Red Hat Pro 565 points
28 December 2012 10:16 PM

 

Geoff,

When you plug in the WG111, what comes up in your /var/log/messages? Do you see the device show up in the output of the lsusb command? It looks like that adapter might have used multiple chipsets necessitating different drivers over its production run.

Christopher Wawak, RHCE
Technical Account Manager - Red Hat Global Support Services 

av Active Contributor 105 points
28 December 2012 11:45 PM

lsusb shows this

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 1385:4251 Netgear, Inc WG111T (no firmware)

the messages log seems to indicate it found the device, although typing the output here seems a bit much, it says found device and the numbers for idVendor and idProduct match those above and it calls out the Product WGT111T. When working the light indicator on the device flashes, but it is not.

restarting the network service puts messages in the log and I wonder from that if I am doing something wrong configuring the wireless MAC addresess, not sure. Initially I was putting the MAC address of the router for the device mac address and leaving the BSSID blank. Perhaps I'm not filling in these correctly and that is also one reason things aren't working.

the message says something to the effect of ifdown-eth device has AMC address 00:00:00:00:00:00#12E8:40:F2:81:4C:8A#01252:54::00:43:22:36#01252:54:00:43::22:36, instead of configured address (the one I put in). Ignoring.

Can anyone clarify what if anything needs to be in the BSSID, Device MAC and Cloned MAC address areas please? Maybe this is one of my problems.

thanks

geoff

Christopher Wawak's picture Red Hat Pro 565 points
2 January 2013 3:17 PM

Geoff,

How are you configuring your wireless device - GUI or CLI tools?

For me, if the wireless device is working and I'm logged into the GNOME desktop, all I have to do is click the network manager icon in the dock/panel, select a wireless network, enter the password, and be on my way. 

You shouldn't need to enter in any mac addresses for the router or adapter, in any case. All those should be automatically identified.

Chris

av Active Contributor 105 points
6 January 2013 9:37 PM

I'm just using the GUI. problem is it looks like even though the logs seem to indicate it found the device it doesn't activate it for whatever reason so there is nothing showing up to select. I've been trying to figure out how to 'turn it on' you could say but so far have been unsuccessful, remember I know when this deivce is actually on because there is a light on it that flashes and right not it is not, so I'm guessing even though this device was on the list of devices in the link previously sent it really doesn't work without finding a device driver.

Thanks

Geoff

FJ Red Hat Expert 1059 points
6 January 2013 9:51 PM

Hi Geoffrey,

 

I can see you guys already covered few things about network Manager. You got to make sure network manager services are running. Otherwise red hat fails to detect the wireless networks around.

service NetworkManager start

chkconfig NetworkManager on

If you guys already covered this please ignore my comment.

Frank

 
av Active Contributor 105 points
7 January 2013 1:28 AM

Network Manager is running, I attached an ethernet cable to the box and have a working network. Unfortunately it's not what I wanted to do so I still need to locate a USB device that has drivers for Linux included. I'm quite sure this is my problem with the old one I have, It might be supported but finding the directions on where they are or how to build them has been challenging.

thanks,

Geoff

Christopher Wawak's picture Red Hat Pro 565 points
7 January 2013 1:57 PM

Geoff, unfortunately I feel like you're on the right track with saying that you might need a different wireless device.

rtl8187 NetGear WG111v2 0x0846 0x6a00
rtl8187 NetGear WG111v3 0x0846 0x4260

 

These are the only supported versions of the NetGear WG111 I see on the Linux Wireless web site. 

You said that the output in lsusb was this:

 

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 1385:4251 Netgear, Inc WG111T (no firmware)

Unfortunately, it appears as though that USB ID is not supported by the Linux Wireless project. 

Chris

av Active Contributor 105 points
15 January 2013 2:18 AM

Ok, so I went out and spend a couple of bucks on this TP-LINK  Model TL-WN727N wireless adapter and now I'm looking to somehow get it working. All indications are it is 'supposed' to work but my guess is a driver might still be needed to kick it into gear.

Bus 005 Device 002: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter

From the messages Log:

Jan 14 19:51:52 avalanche96 kernel: usb 5-2: new high speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
Jan 14 19:51:52 avalanche96 kernel: usb 5-2: New USB device found, idVendor=148f, idProduct=5370
Jan 14 19:51:52 avalanche96 kernel: usb 5-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Jan 14 19:51:52 avalanche96 kernel: usb 5-2: Product: 802.11 n WLAN
Jan 14 19:51:52 avalanche96 kernel: usb 5-2: Manufacturer: TPlink
Jan 14 19:51:52 avalanche96 kernel: usb 5-2: SerialNumber: 1.0
Jan 14 19:51:52 avalanche96 kernel: usb 5-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
 

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to when my next steps would be?

Please?

Thanks

Geoff

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