[clue-tech] Can't get wirelessly connected with new laptop

[katanacb at comcast.net]

Hi there,

I just got a new laptop and I've gotten everything working correctly but wireless. The laptop is a Dell D820, and it has the ipw3945 wireless chipset. The problem is I can't get the wireless to connect to *anything*, whether it's a wide-open network or if it's locked down. I thought it might just be a hardware problem, but I can see a list of wireless networks with NetworkManager, so the card is working to some degree, but when I try to connect to one, it just fails.

I don't know if it ever worked in Windows, because I reformatted the drive as soon as the laptop arrived and was unboxed :-)  Also, I've tried 4 different distros (FC6, Ubuntu Dapper, Ubuntu Edgy, and SuSE 10,1) -- they all have this problem.


Here's the relevant messages in the system log when I try to connect to my home wireless network:

Nov 17 00:05:28 linux-eg7c kernel: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth1: link becomes ready
Nov 17 00:05:31 linux-eg7c dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 2
Nov 17 00:05:33 linux-eg7c dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 2
Nov 17 00:05:35 linux-eg7c dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 2
Nov 17 00:05:37 linux-eg7c dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
Nov 17 00:05:38 linux-eg7c kernel: eth1: no IPv6 routers present
Nov 17 00:05:40 linux-eg7c dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
Nov 17 00:05:47 linux-eg7c dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
Nov 17 00:05:59 linux-eg7c dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14
Nov 17 00:06:13 linux-eg7c dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
Nov 17 00:06:15 linux-eg7c dhclient: caught deadly SIGTERM


If I look at my wireless AP's log, I can see the MAC address for the laptop "connecting" and "authenticating successfully" (I'm using WPA_PSK here). But, the laptop sits and waits for an IP address and just times out, and I can't ever see that the AP sent an IP address to the laptop.

When wireless fails to connect, it just falls back to the wired connection .... which works like a champ.

This is strange because my old laptop worked (and still works) just fine ... however it was using the ipw2200 chipset. Also, I've tried running the wireless network "wide open" (no key / encryption) and it still just sits there and waits forever.

What might be wrong?

-Chris