WiFi connection problem

[Oldmoparguy1]

I'm enjoying my new Mint install. Still learning the in's and out's. The only problem so far is getting the wifi connected. I've got at least a dozen devices connected throughout the house, + 3 lan devices. I pretty much know what to do to put a device on the network, but this laptop with Mint is ignoring me. I use MAC address filtering which keeps the rabble out, but even with all security turned off I still can't connect. I have it connected through the lan right now which works just fine. I could use some help....

TIA

 

[Donald]

Well what are the problem symptoms?

 

[GrtArtiste]

The first step is finding out what wireless card this laptop has and then finding out if it needs a special driver. I had to go thru this before with a Broadcom card in a Dell desktop.

 

[Oldmoparguy1]

Originally Posted By: GrtArtiste
The first step is finding out what wireless card this laptop has and then finding out if it needs a special driver. I had to go thru this before with a Broadcom card in a Dell desktop.


that sounds like a good place to start. It just occurred to me, I never had this laptop on the network with win-7.

thanks.

 

[simple_gifts]

Not to rain on the OP's parade, but linux support for wifi is "hit or miss" or requires an involved workaround.

This is a hinderance to linux adoption because, as some will say "linux doesn't support wifi xyz" Generally the real issue is the wifi chipset vendor doesn't release the info that is needed to write a driver, so perhaps "the wifi vendor" doesn't support linux is more accurate

This is primarily why I recommended people who want use linux on laptop with wifi (effortlessly) to buy a refurb commercial linux laptop with a supported wifi chipset or try the live CD prior to installing it; I understand this really doesn't apply in your case; I just wanted to explain some of the potential disappointment that may occur as you research this issue.

 

[spackard]

What simple_gifts said.

About 10 years ago I contacted Broadcom to offer to write a driver for linux at no cost to them.
They are pretty protective of their code. They said no. I noticed other vendors wouldn't do it either (looking around at others who tried).
Somebody finally came up with a workaround, which is to use a wrapper around the Windows driver.
As far as I know that's still how linux does it. ndiswrapper.

 

[Kuato]

Ack...good luck with that.

 

[Killer223]

have you gone to menu, administration, drivers, and searched to see if there is NDISwrapper driver available? i've yet to come into a laptop that couldn't get on the wifi with linux. sometimes you have to have the driver disk and go through the install process, but it's doable. all depends how much work you care to put into it.

 

[mk378]

I'm assuming you have no wifi options presented in Network Manager, not even an "Enable Wifi" place to check. If you do see your wifi AP listed, but can't connect to it, that is usually not because of a lack of the driver.

If you have "Enable Wifi" but can't enable it, this may be because the RFKill (aka "Airplane Mode") switch is engaged. Some laptops have a slide switch and some use a key combination.

In a terminal, use these commands to further troubleshoot.
Part 1. Was wifi hardware detected and driver loaded?
iw list
This should produce a long list of your wifi card and driver's capabilities-- go to Part 3. If it just returns to the prompt, you have no active wifi driver-- go to Part 2.

Part 2. Is there any wifi card installed in the laptop?
lspci to see if any wifi cards are present on the PCI(e) bus. The "Network controller" is usually wifi. (Most Ethernet cards are "Ethernet controller") Example:
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6205 [Taylor Peak] (rev 34)
Then do lspci -n to find the manufacturer:device ID (key off of the bus number 03:00 in this case)
03:00.0 0280: 8086:0085 (rev 34)
The model is something you can Google to see if any drivers exist.

Part 3. Is there a network interface?
Network Manager should have set up
iw dev
This will tell you the wlan or wlp number of the interface. If you get a blank here, Network Manager isn't working right.

Part 4. Can you receive any networks?
sudo iw dev scan
Use the device name you found in part 3.
error "Command failed: network is down" is likely you're in the RFKill. Try sudo ifconfig up, If this fails with "disabled by hardware switch", it's RFKill again.
If you get "error 16, device is busy", simply try again.
You should see, after a few seconds, a big list of all the wifi AP's in range. If you get no error but a blank result, it is likely faulty hardware.

 

[Oldmoparguy1]

Originally Posted By: Killer223
have you gone to menu, administration, drivers, and searched to see if there is NDISwrapper driver available? i've yet to come into a laptop that couldn't get on the wifi with linux. sometimes you have to have the driver disk and go through the install process, but it's doable. all depends how much work you care to put into it.

Well, gee. Without wifi, a laptop is just a small desktop. This could be a game killer.

BTW: the network chip is Atheros AR945

 

[mk378]

Atheros chips especially the "ath9k" series of b/g/n chips (so called because they have 4 digit model numbers starting with 9), are well supported. Network should have come up automatically when you install Mint.

Nobody uses ndiswrapper any more. Best thing to do with a card that doesn't have a mainstream Linux driver is to replace it. And don't buy anything Broadcom, they're not open-source friendly.

 

[Oldmoparguy1]

mk378, I did all the steps you said. Turns out I can see all 7 of the local networks with good signals. When I try to connect I just get some sort of generic error msg with no code saying I'm not connected.

After sleeping on it, I swapped the win-7 drive back in this morning. I have the exact same problem in windows. It looks like my wifi adapter is broke. Bummer... Unless you have any more advice, I'm going to open another thread on the adapter.

Thanks folks, I appreciate it.