Issues with Wireless and Multiple Access Points?

I'm running Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex with all the latest patches installed, running madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801 as my wireless driver, and I seem to have absolutely no problems, until I hit my university's wireless network. It's a standard WEP network, non-hidden, but it does use multiple access points around the campus (which I can see using 'sudo iwlist scan'), but whenever I attempt to connect to it, I get NetworkManager showing both lights turning green, and it says that it's attempting to get an address, but then it fails.

Sometimes it appears to connect for a few short seconds, but then drops again.

The same thing was happening with Hardy Heron - I installed Intrepid because it apparently had support for the Atheros built into the kernel. I found that this wasn't the case, and had to revert to using Madwifi. I've tried using ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers, but this doesn't seem to work either.

Any suggestions on hunting down the likely cause of my issues? Cheers!

 

Not sure in general, but you might at least upgrade to the latest MadWifi snapshot, which was 09032008 (Or some combo of those numbers.)
If you go to http://MadWifi.org/ticket/1192 there's a link to the latest snapshot.

I know it fixed a few problems from the earlier ones, but don't know if it will fix yours.

Also, it might be worth asking on the Ubuntu forums. There's over 100,000 members (though I have no idea how many are active) and this is, possibly, an Ubuntu/AR5007EG issue.

Also, it seems that installing linux-backports-modules-intrepid-generic does fix the issue, at least for several of us, with Intrepid and the AR5007EG card.

 

Installed that new snapshot of madwifi, didn't spot that before, thanks.

Will give it a test tomorrow, when I'm supposed to be listening in my lecture

As for linux-backports-modules-intrepid-generic, would I have to make uninstall madwifi first, and enable the modules elsewhere, or is there some other process for this?

 

You don't have to actually uninstall it. (You might want to keep it around in case the next upgrade breaks something else.)

Remove the MadWifi module.

sudo modprobe -r ath_pci

That will kill your wireless temporarily, so you might want to disable it in NetworkManager first. (It might not allow you to unload it if NM is using it.) To disable it in NetworkManager, right click the icon in the upper right and there's a checkbox there that you can uncheck.


Get the backports package

sudo aptitude install linux-backports-modules-intrepid-generic

Insert the module.

sudo modprobe ath5k

See if the card works. There's a good chance, however, that you'll have to reboot first. Whether or not the card works without the reboot--before doing the reboot, blacklist the ath_pci module. Add this to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

blacklist ath_pci

Note that with the ath5k module, the card will be known as wlan0. With the MadWifi ath_pci moduel it's known as ath0.

 

Looks like that's the setup I'm currently using, am in university on one of the desktop stations, and my laptop still can't get onto the wireless network. Bugger.

 

Slight update on this: I've found that I can get online on the university network using Linpus, but not using Ubuntu 8.10.

Linpus seems to use madwifi, as does Ubuntu. Anybody know how to find out the madwifi version under Linpus so that I can perhaps try compiling and installing an old driver module under Ubuntu? 'modinfo ath_pci | grep ver' doesn't return any useful information