[H-GEN] Getting a GN-WPEAG to work in SUSE 10.0

[Russell Stuart]

On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 17:16 +1000, Paul Cornford wrote:
> I am trying to get a GN-WPEAG wireless card (AR5212 chipset) working in
> my SuSE 10.0 box. Suse has picked up the card and iwconfig yields the
> following:
> 
> ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"cornford"  Nickname:"peach"
>           Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.432 GHz  Access Point: 00:0F:3D:FB:6B:E4
>           Bit Rate:1 Mb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
>           Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
>           Encryption key:A36F-F782-9B   Security mode:restricted
>           Power Management:off
>           Link Quality=0/94  Signal level=-95 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
>           Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
>           Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
> 
> I am not sure what all this means but the card works fine under win98
> on the same machine. Under Suse, the power led is steady and the link
> led winks on and off. All other settings are the same as those under
> windows. But I cannot ping the access point. I have placed the
> interface in the router's external zone and the AP (a D-Link router) is
> accepting pings. So just some helpful hints would do.

This line:
  Link Quality=0/94  Signal level=-95 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
means the card can't see any signal.

That means either there isn't any signal, or Linux the
Linux drivers don't work for this card.  However, others have
got the Linux drivers to work for this card:
  http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-77446.html

To investigate the "No Signal" issue I suggest browsing this
site, which is the home of the Linux drivers for your chip.
You are in luck - they look very active, so if you post a
question it will probably be answered:
  http://madwifi.org/

If the driver's are not working, it may be because you have
an old kernel.  You didn't say.  Try upgrading the latest
kernel.  If you are not too tied to SuSE, try Ubuntu.  Every
post I have seen on the Internet that says they have it
working also says they are running that.  Not that it should
matter, if you have a reasonable up-to-date kernel -  say
2.6.12 or better.