Re: A couple of minor issues with NM

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2006-12-25 at 09:54 -0500, Darren Albers wrote:
> On 12/24/06, Timothy Murphy <tim birdsnest maths tcd ie> wrote:
> > On Monday 25 December 2006 00:53, Darren Albers wrote:
> >
> > > Ok so lets narrow the focus to just the issues you are having, next
> > > time you reboot and it does not see your access point if you run the
> > > command iwlist <interfacename> scanning does it show all the access
> > > points after a few runs?
> >
> > I think I've made a little progress.
> > If the main LED on the PCMCIA card is not on,
> > I will get nowhere until I physically eject the card,
> > and re-insert it.
> > Then, if the light goes on, and I do nothing,
> > NetworkManager is quite likely to connect me
> > after a delay of  a minute or so.
> 
> If the light isn't on then the card is probably not active, does this
> always happen or just once and awhile?
> 
> >
> > I find the output of "sudo iwlist eth0 scan"
> > mirrors the results shown by the knetworkmanager icon in the panel.
> > If this shows me one or two networks then so does iwlist.
> >
> > At the moment, for example, I see two networks
> > and iwlist gives me:
> > -------------------------------------------------------
> > [tim martha ~]$ sudo iwlist eth0 scan
> > eth0      Scan completed :
> >           Cell 01 - Address: 00:16:B6:DA:56:B4
> >                     ESSID:"dd-wrt"
> >                     Mode:Master
> >                     Frequency:2.457 GHz (Channel 10)
> >                     Signal level:-59 dBm  Noise level:-98 dBm
> >                     Encryption key:off
> >           Cell 02 - Address: 02:02:2D:4A:52:80
> >                     ESSID:"maths.tcd.ie"
> >                     Mode:Ad-Hoc
> >                     Frequency:2.457 GHz (Channel 10)
> >                     Signal level:-57 dBm  Noise level:-98 dBm
> >                     Encryption key:on
> > -------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I think I've increased the times NM works OK
> > from 30% to 85%.
> 
> Those two AP's are on the same channel, this will likely cause
> interference if they are within range of each other.   If you control
> one change the channel to something like 1 or 6 to get it away from
> the other AP.
> 
> So if I remember properly your primary issues were not being able to
> connect reliably, not all SSID's being seen, not automatically
> connecting to one AP and Not holding a connection.
> 
> Issue 1 Not connecting:  It looks like your card is not coming active
> all the time, check dmesg to see if there is any errors why it is not
> being activated properly everytime.
> 
> Issue 2 Not Holding a connection:  Both AP's are on the same channel,
> you should move one so it doesn't conflict.   If I remember properly
> most of the channels overlap so you should use 1, 6, or 11 to avoid
> any overlaps.
> 
> Issue 3 All AP's are not seen:   I think this is the result of the
> AP's being on the same channel, it could also be a result of your card
> not scanning properly.  If you do an iwlist and it shows the same AP's
> as NM then the card just is not seeing them.   This can be caused by a
> large number of things but the most obvious right now is interference
> from the AP's being on the same channel.
> 
> Issue 4 Not connecting automatically: NM (Dan correct me if I am
> wrong) will not automatically connect to an unencrypted access point,

Not quite; if you've connected successfully to _any_ access point
before, NM will autoconnect to that access point if it's got the newest
timestamp of all the access points discovered from a scan, regardless of
whether or not it's encrypted.  But NM won't just go out and connect to
any random access point; you have to have _told_ it to connect to that
SSID before.  It's all based of SSID, and while that may have worked in
the past, we'll probably have to change that to some combination of SSID
+BSSID sooner rather than later.

Dan

> so if you want to connect to that AP automatically you should enable
> WEP on it.   My instructions from earlier worked for me with a WRT-54G
> running DD-WRT and NM so hopefully they will get you started.
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