[plug] ma111 usb wireless adapter

[Craig Ringer]

Hi Darren

On Sat, 2005-01-29 at 00:47 +0800, Darren wrote:
> Howdy list I am trying to get this ma111

I'm not sure exactly what an MA111 is. I'm going to reply based on the
assumption that you mean this:
http://www.netgear.com.au/products/prod_details.asp?prodID=173&view=
but it'd be good if you could give more details about what you're trying
to use in future.

> to work on my laptop for a 
> couple of weeks now, and now its time to seek help. It's running Ubuntu 
> 4.10. The laptop has an internal Intel LAN connection which seems to 
> work fine. I have a e-smith DHCP server on the network that dishes out 
> IPs. Running ifconfig I can see wlan0 but it has no IP address.
> Running dhclient wlan0 it just times out. The ma111 works no probs with 
> m$ so the hardware must be ok. I have the linux-wlanctl-ng package 
> installed and have followed different instructions on the net to no 
> avail. I must be close to solving this as wlan0 is visible. Running 
> lsmod shows the prism2 module loaded. Any help and ideas would be 
> greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I'm not familar with the specific hardware you're trying to use, or the
PRISM chipsets in general, so I don't know how much help I can be.

In general, once I have the interface visible I'll try a DHCP request.
If, as you describe, that fails, I tend to look at the iwconfig output
for the device and see if it has actually found a network. I'm not sure
if the device you're using supports the iwconfig interface, but if it
does try:
	iwconfig wlan0
and check if (a) it's found the ESSID of your LAN, (b) signal strength
looks reasonable, and (c) it shows the MAC address of your access point.

If the iwconfig output looks OK, try bringing the interface up manually
and seeing if you can ping anything:
	/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.2 up
(where "192.168.0.2" is a free IP within the range you use on your LAN).
Try pinging the gateway, see if you get any response.

If everything looks like it should be working, but it doesn't look like
pings are getting through, I tend to fire up ethereal on both sides (the
gateway and the client) and do some testing to see where, exactly, the
communication problem is. Unless you're familiar with ethereal and the
way the network operates that may not do you much good. Perhaps drop in
to the next workshop?

-- 
Craig Ringer