Wifi under Ubuntu Feisty.

[reddragdiva]

I downloaded Feisty alpha 2 to try on the second partition of the w*rk laptop. (My next feat will be to get the Windows installations of Outlook 2003 and Cisco VPN working under Wine.) The wifi cards didn't work, but doing a bug hunt found this workaround. Do this whenever you plug a card in:

sudo ifconfig [interface] down
sudo iwconfig [interface] essid [essid] key [key]
sudo ifconfig [interface] up
sudo dhclient3 [interface]

(We use WEP because we don't really care. Your mileage may vary.)

I'm now going around various bugs linking to the bug in question (78037) so that the various driver maintainers can see what's up.

The rest of Feisty is luvverly. If you don't mind the above hassle every damn time you start up or put a card in, it's worth a play just for new versions of stuff. The w*rk Dell (Latitude D600, P-M 1.6GHz, 512MB) is SO MUCH FASTER than my own laptop. Pity it's also twice the weight.

Comments

[poggs.livejournal.com]

Evolution is OK as an Outlook client - and try vpnc as an alternative to the Cisco VPN Client.

[reddragdiva]

Pah. You ignore my need for hack value!

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

I *think* there may even be a vpn client in the default install..

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

What does feisty do that's yum?

You can set bugs as dupes if they are rather than link if ya want.

I'm currently using dapper for shitty desktop wifi (no dhcp), edgy for no wifi but a nicer inkscape, and openbsd on the laptop.

[reddragdiva]

I'm using it for latest candy versions and the chance to influence the course of it by filing bugs on it before it's released.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Bugs are good :)

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

INDESCRIBABLE WIRELESS ANGER.

Implausibly, I've managed to lose one of my test cards. Also, you have followup mail on the bug.

[reddragdiva]

I must admit one attraction of Feisty is to write posts like this to trigger your INDESCRIBABLE [xxx] ANGER.

But heck. Your job is basically getting trolled by this sort of thing.

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

My job is writing a PhD on fruitflies. You may have some idea of just how dire that is when fixing other people's wireless problems seems more attractive.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted to make a list of all my Ubuntu wifi problems but I reckon he'll run ;)

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

Unf. zd1211 should be fixed in feisty already. I've got another bug I'm working on that's related to nsc-ircc being indescribably stupid, and which is probably biting a bunch of Thinkpad users. Plus upstream kernel changes breaking all sorts of shit, newer versions of drivers requiring entirely different firmware, four different (and not entirely compatible) 802.11 implementations, undocumented development repositories and OH GOD GIVE ME BACK MY FRUITFLIES

[reddragdiva]

O rly? So it is a kernel problem, not something higher up? Good-o :-D

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

Oh, this one? No, I've no clue what's causing it right now. I need to find a WEP setup and beat it with sticks until I have the faintest idea what the hell's going on. Just as a basic sanity check, are you broadcasting the SSID or is the network hidden? It turns out that every bit of Linux code ever gets the hidden case wrong, but it used to sort of work by accident.

[reddragdiva]

Publicly broadcast. Arkady used to have a wifi cracker for Palm; I should try it on our network and see what the practical cracking time is for it. As I said, I have both cards here and Arkady has a third one, if you have specific tests you want us to run through. I'm not sure I remember how to actually adjust any parameters of the access point, having set it up early 2004 and not touched it since ...

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I won't upgrade my Thinkpad Edgy just yet then.

[reddragdiva]

Feisty is an alpha. The hard part is remembering to report the bugs, not just working around them by hand. Remember, it's Ubuntu: if a n00b couldn't fix it, it's a bug.

[barakta]

Shellscripts for the WEP game?

[reddragdiva]

I will indeed be putting that into a script, though I hope one day it will magically not need to be run.