/etc/network/interfaces: transition from jaunty to karmic

[JBD]

Hi,

I installed ubuntu jaunty on an external USB drive (since I know more or less how to configure jaunty). I also installed karmic (kernel linux 2.6.31-17-generic) to test this karmic distribution. I have the following problem for configuring the network.
On jaunty, my /etc/network/interfaces file was:

auto lo wlan0
iface lo inet loopback

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wireless-key ABCD-EFGH-IJ
        wireless-essid ABCDEF
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        channel 6
        mode Managed
        metric 10
        needhostname yes

and the network worked, before I even connected via gdm or console.


Keeping the same file does not work with karmic. At startup, I don't have wireless network. I can connect using the wireless tools in KDE and gnome, but I am not fully satisfied with this, because when I am connecting remotely, if the computer reboots I will not be able to be connected again. So I am trying to understand the new syntax in /etc/network/interfaces.
My interface is still wlan0, since

sudo iwlist scan

gives

 lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

wmaster0  Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff
                    Channel:6
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality=52/70  Signal level=-58 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    ESSID:"ABCDEF"
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s
                    Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
                              36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Mode:Master
                    Extra:tsf=00000004c49b000e
                    Extra: Last beacon: 81308ms ago
                    IE: Unknown: 00065253464D4A42
                    IE: Unknown: 010482848B96
                    IE: Unknown: 030106
                    IE: Unknown: 0406000200000000
                    IE: Unknown: 2A0100
                    IE: Unknown: 32080C1218243048606C

vboxnet0  Interface doesn't support scanning.

I tried some variants below in /etc/network/interfaces, inspired by posts on http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/ concerning karmic and networking, and in particular I tried to use the keywords wireless-keymode, wireless-channel, etc. instead of keymode, channel... but nothing works, so I am stuck.

auto lo wlan0
iface lo inet loopback

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-mode Managed
wireless-essid ABCDEF
wireless-keymode restricted
wireless-key ABCD-EFGH-IJ
wireless-channel 6
metric 10
needhostname yes
netmask 255.255.255.0

ifconfig

gives

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0c:76:f1:f2:44  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          Packets reçus:0 erreurs:0 :0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000 
          Octets reçus:0 (0.0 B) Octets transmis:0 (0.0 B)
          Interruption:19 Adresse de base:0xe800 

lo        Link encap:Boucle locale  
          inet adr:127.0.0.1  Masque:255.0.0.0
          adr inet6: ::1/128 Scope:Hôte
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          Packets reçus:8 erreurs:0 :0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 lg file transmission:0 
          Octets reçus:480 (480.0 B) Octets transmis:480 (480.0 B)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:f8:a9:f7:84  
          adr inet6: fe80::218:f8ff:fea9:f784/64 Scope:Lien
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1492  Metric:1
          Packets reçus:7 erreurs:0 :0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000 
          Octets reçus:1100 (1.1 KB) Octets transmis:944 (944.0 B)

wlan0:avahi Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:f8:a9:f7:84  
          inet adr:169.254.11.116  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Masque:255.255.0.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1492  Metric:1

wmaster0  Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-18-F8-A9-F7-84-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00  
          UP RUNNING  MTU:0  Metric:1
          Packets reçus:0 erreurs:0 :0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000 
          Octets reçus:0 (0.0 B) Octets transmis:0 (0.0 B)

I also tried different network wifi cards, different wifi access points (netgear and linksys), and I cant make any of this work with /etc/netwkor/interfaces (unless I disable WEP).
Any idea please ? Thank you !

[falko]

I think you forgot some whitespace in /etc/network/interfaces.

auto lo wlan0
iface lo inet loopback

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-mode Managed
wireless-essid ABCDEF
wireless-keymode restricted
wireless-key ABCD-EFGH-IJ
wireless-channel 6
metric 10
needhostname yes
netmask 255.255.255.0

should be

auto lo wlan0
iface lo inet loopback

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
  wireless-mode Managed  
  wireless-essid ABCDEF
  wireless-keymode restricted
  wireless-key ABCD-EFGH-IJ
  wireless-channel 6
  metric 10
  needhostname yes
  netmask 255.255.255.0

instead.

[JBD]

Thanks for the tip, Falko. I tried to insert whitespaces as you suggested. Unfortunately, the network does not work better (I restarted it using service networking --full-restart and also using ifdown -a ; ifup wlan0 to be sure). Now

ifdown -a

gives

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

and

iwconfig

gives

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  
          Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=12 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

[alidrus]

I am having exactly the same problem. These used to work before I upgraded to 9.10. Now, the only way I can get wifi to work is if I click on the network manager applet in gnome and like you i wont be able to connect remotely to my office if my PC is somehow rebooted while I am away.

In my case, I have already tried manually editing /etc/network/interfaces, so I thought I must have done something wrong. So I install network-admin and configured wireless via that. The configuration that was added via the gui tool was:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-key **********
wireless-essid ********

auto wlan0

When I tried rebooting and logging in via a text console, the interface did not come back up. dmesg showed me this:

[ 24.863155] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

I am pretty convinced there is some script that is failing to configure the interface properly before dhclient runs.

Please let me know if you found the solution to this problem. I have been searching the internet for some information for quite some time now and it has been frustrating.

Thanks

[alidrus]

Please ignore my previous post.

I have managed to solve my problem. Apparently Network Manager in karmic only allows your wifi to activate upon logging in to Gnome or KDE (not sure if this is a bug or what).

I solved the problem by installing wicd (which replaces network manager) and configuring the wifi to automatically start. When the machine rebooted, the wifi was up even before I logged into Gnome.

Hope this helps you as well.

[alidrus]

If you use WEP like me, here is how to solve the problem without using or installing wicd.

Firstly, test that it will work by first stopping the network manager service:

/etc/init.d/network-manager stop

This is to verify that you are running independently of network-manager.

Then edit /etc/network/interfaces like this:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
pre-up wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf &
post-down kill -9 `pidof wpa_supplicant`
auto wlan0

Depending on your wifi card, you may need to use the -D option for wpa_supplicant.

Then, edit /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (this will probably be created as a new file) and make it look like this:

# Static WEP keys

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

network={
	ssid="YOUR_SSID"
	key_mgmt=NONE
	wep_key0=YOUR_WEP_KEY
	wep_tx_keyidx=0
}

(The above code was modified from examples in /usr/share/doc/wpa_supplicant/examples)

Then restart networking:

/etc/init.d/networking restart

Verify that your wlan0 interface has an IP and you can ping other hosts on your LAN. If it works you may safely remove network-manager via apt-get like i did.

[JBD]

Dear alidrus,

thank you for your suggestion. I did not try it for the moment, but I used the following syntax for /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo wlan0
iface lo inet loopback

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
  pre-up iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
  pre-up iwconfig wlan0 channel 6
  pre-up iwconfig wlan0 essid ABCDEF
  pre-up iwconfig wlan0 key ABCD-EFGH-IJ
  metric 10
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  needhostname yes

and everything works fine on karmic 32 bits.

Then I changed my wireless device to an ANATEL - LITEON WN7600R with RaLink RT2860 chipset (if I understand correctly), and I also switched to jaunty 64bits. Since then, neither version of /etc/network/interfaces works - I have to use the NetworkManager on kde or gnome. Besides, I am not connected to the network automatically on kde, but only on gnome. On kde I have to click on the ESSID in the list of the wireless networks.

This suggests that the syntax in /etc/network/interfaces may depend on which particular wireless card is used.

If I have the patience to try other solutions, including that of alidrus, I will let you know about the results...

PS. How do I mark this issues as "solved" in the forum please ?