Problems with orinoco gold and DSL

Forum: Networking
Topic: Problems with orinoco gold and DSL
started by: Freitag

Posted by Freitag on Mar. 31 2005,17:39

Hi. I also have some wireless difficulties and am new to DSL.

I have a Gateway solo and Orinoco gold card (WiFi 11 Mbits/s Gold). During boot DSL detects the card and it briefly (one flash) does something. The Netcardconfig also briefly flashes the cards access lights green but then reports:

"Sending DHCP broadcast from device eth0 Operation Failed."

Also when I try:

ndiswrapper -i /mnt/hda1/windows/wlluc48b.inf

I get an error message from this command that the hardware is not found.

Any help would be very appreciated Sorry for the basic nature of this post, I'm just starting with DSL wireless.

Thanks!

Posted by caulktel on April 01 2005,15:05

Freitag,

I use a Orinoco gold card in my laptop with no problems at all. I know this is a simple questain but are you within range of a access point? I't appears that there is nothing out there to offer you an IP address when DSL asks for it. Also make sure you don't have Mac address filtering turned on on your access point unless you have entered your Orinocos address into your Mac allow list. In any case, I believe DSL and your Orinoco card are working fine.

Posted by Freitag on April 02 2005,13:09

Hi Joel;

Thanks for the reply! I have some progress to report, but still have beginner problems.

I purchased a new ORiNOCO 11b/g PC card. Using the .inf and other files on the CDROM I would successfully complete the following:

ndiswrapper <pathnamehere>/driver.inf

This worked! Hardware found! Yeah! Rebooted and then used a shell script for iwconfig from the following URL.

< http://www.netstumbler.org/archive/index.php/t-9073.html >

The comment by "CrackerStealth" was interesting.
Also found the following helped:

< http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/Installation >

Also interesting was the summary article by Jean Tourrilhes from the HP Labs, Palo Alto "A bit more about the technologies involved" in a Linux Wireless LAN Howto archive.
< http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux >

Using the startup script at:

< http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/StartupScripts >

I hacked slightly their example to show "ath0" rather than eth0 as the device. My startup script was then

.....
'start') modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig ath0 power off
iwconfig ath0 key restricted WEP_KEY_FOR_MY_NETWORK
iwconfig ath0 essid MY_NETWORK_ESSID

I got the ESSID using min_net_stumbler and a CE device I have. The signal strength was excellent.

Everything looked good! I would start iwspy and see the DSL computer pass the WEP key to the hub, but....
When I try firefox, ssh2, ftp, etc. I get an error saying that the names cannot be resolved.

I had corrected the resolv.conf file but our network has a challenge/response mode. I only have experience with this on Windows, but basically when you initially access the internet (you must use a Web Browser), what ever URL you are trying to access is proceeded by a request to login with a corporate login/password. You are then automatically routed to your originally requested web site. Your IP is dynamically assigned. Once you have authenticated you can freely access wireless until you close the wireless connection completely.

I think that this might be the problem now, but given my inexperience am not sure. I will probably take this portable to a Panera Bread (in our area these all have open wireless) and see if I the problem is this challenge/response.

Thanks for your response! That's an up to the minute update!

Thanks for the response Joel. This is so close to working....

Posted by Waterns on April 04 2005,14:34

Thanks Freitag. I just purchased a Orinoco Gold (classic i think) and I will be sure to check this thread when it comes in the mail.

Posted by Freitag on April 04 2005,15:47

This works now! I used the DSL Tools rather than command line configuration. Joel was correct, the card did install correctly. The challenge/response thing mentioned in my earlier email was just another thing handled by firefox and when completed everything worked fine, including ftp/ssh/DSL archive access, etc.

Thanks for these comments and help!
:laugh: