[clue-tech] Coffee shop wireless connection problem

[Dennis J Perkins]

Matt Gushee wrote:
> Okay, last question for tonight.
>
> I have this ASUS Eee netbook running Arch Linux (BTW, yeah, the 
> keyboard is a bit small, but I love the extreme portability of it), 
> which I use at various places around town. Now, it happens that at my 
> favorite coffee shop I usually can't connect to the Net. I've spoken 
> to the staff about it, and they are great people but not very 
> technical: they know how to change the password and reboot the router, 
> and that's about it. When that doesn't solve the problem, they call 
> Qwest.
>
> Now, I can't give many specifics, because (a) I don't have much 
> information, and (b) it is not always the same problem. E.g., last 
> month I could get connected to the access point and get an IP thru 
> DHCP, but DNS wasn't working. With the help of Wireshark, I eventually 
> figured out that it was an IPv6 issue, and disabling IPv6 solved that 
> problem. Now I can't get an IP address. Since there are several other 
> locations where I have no trouble getting connected, I don't think 
> there's anything wrong with my hardware, and probably not with my 
> software. And I have checked and rechecked multiple times that I have 
> the correct password.
>
> Anyway. What I am most interested in at this point is troubleshooting 
> techniques. Given that my machine can see the access point, but I am 
> either failing authentication or failing to get a DHCP lease, what if 
> anything can I do to get more details about what exactly is happening?
>
> Does it help if I say that: I am using wicd, mainly via the GUI, to 
> manage connections? And that I have enabled its debug mode, but 
> haven't seen any helpful log messages ("dhcpcd timed out" is typical). 
> Also, my
> kernel is 2.6.31, and Arch Linux has few if any distro-specific kernel 
> patches. And my wireless controller appears to the system as a RealTek
> RTL8187SE (rev 22).
>
> TIA for all your tips.
>

You could try iwconfig ra0  or iwlist ra0 scan  to see if an ESSID is 
reported.  Since you can connect to some sites, I doubt you need to use 
iwpriv.  Wicd seems to be able to use iwpriv automatically in my experience.