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Contents
PREREQUISITES
Hardware
Suitable hardware is obviously needed to create a Wifi connection, that means it must be correctly detected by Mageia. To check that, there is two solutions:
- Using the Mageia Control Center (MCC)
menu -> Tools -> System tools -> Mageia Control Center
, tab Hardware and then Browse and configure hardware
Select the Ethernet line (see below) and see what the MCC found :
In this case, there is unfortunately no wireless adapter!
Here is below two examples where wireless adapters are present and correctly detected, the first one is a USB stick and the second a PCI card:
It is important to find a device referring to "802.11" or "wireless" terms. You can see also what are the hardware vendor and reference, it may be useful later on.
- Using the command line is also possible, open a console and enter under root:
Here is an answer that says there is no wireless adapter and another one which is nicer, "wlan0" is what we are looking for (it may have other names):
Software
Drivers or firmwares are also needed, most of them are available in the Mageia repositories (Core and Nonfree), if you have an internet connection (a wired one), there is no problem, Mageia will fetch what it needs automatically. See here how to configure the repositories if necessary:
Software_management#Configure_media_sources_for_install_and_updates
But if you haven't any internet connection, you must install the needed drivers from a CD or a USB stick. See the troubleshooting section below to know the more common drivers.
WIFI CONFIGURATION
Your shiny new Mageia operating system is installed on your computer, the hardware is well detected, and you decide you want to use WiFi.
OK, let's go through this together!
- 1. Access MCC (the Mageia Control Center)
- (You will need to give the root password)
- 2. Once MCC has launched, click on the tab "Network & Internet" and then "Set up a new network interface (LAN, ISDN, ADSL,...)"
- 3. Select "Wireless (Wi-Fi)", then "Next"
- 4. Select your network card in the list.
- If your card is not in the list or the only option is "Use a Windows Driver (with ndiswrapper)", see the alternative method, below.
- Anyway, let us assume your card is there. Select "Next".
- It is possible Mageia need to download a driver it doesn't find. Check the repositories are correctly configured. If the driver isn't in the repositories, try to find it and install it, you can ask help in the Mageia forum. In both cases, start again from the point 2
- 5. Then, you must select your WiFi Access Point by clicking on its SSID (Callsign). If you can't see any, try this I_have_no_access_point_in_the_list
- 6. If your WiFi network is encrypted, Mageia recognizes the encryption type and selects it automatically. Of course, you will need to enter the correct password. Mageia won't do that for you!
The package wpa_supplicant is automatically installed for encrypted connections
- 7. You have to select how the computer will be connected to the net. The easiest method is automatically, using DHCP. But, you can also specify an IP address.
- 8. You should keep the box "Get DNS servers from DHCP" checked. Select "Next".
- 9. Check the 2 first boxes. Select "Next".
- 10. Answer "Yes" to the question "Do you want to start the connection now?"
- Two messages can appear:
See the Troubleshooting section below
- 11. Your computer will connect to the Wi-Fi point if all the information was correctly entered.
- 12. You can test your connection in your favourite browser.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Ndiswrapper
You have followed the above instructions, Mageia recognise your Wifi-card, but the installation failed. You can try another step to solve this. This solution uses Ndiswrapper, which is a method that consists of installing and activating the Windows XP driver. This is useful when your network hardware is not well supported by Linux, which is probably why it's not on the list of supported cards!
Warning! Ndiswrappper allows the use of Windows XP drivers, and XP only, for Linux |
Prerequisites:
- You will need the Windows driver for your card, either on a CD, on your hard disk or other media. You can probably also find it on the Internet, although it is best to download them from the manufacturer's web site and not via a general search for drivers.
- Place the driver in an accessible place, for example on your desktop.
- After Step 3 in the original procedure, select "Use a Windows driver (with ndiswrapper)", and then "Next". The system will perhaps install some packages it needs.
- Navigate to the directory where you stored the driver and select
the_driver_for_my_card.inf
.- You have to choose the file with the ".inf" extension.
- You can continue with the above steps 5 to 12 to finalise the installation.
Some more help and many drivers can be found here : Sourceforge
Most common drivers
It may happen that Mageia fails to chose the right driver. If a first try failed, install the following drivers that seems to match your hardware.
Manufacturer | driver |
---|---|
Broadcom | dkms-broadcom-wl |
Intel | iwlwifi-3945-ucode |
iwlwifi-4965-ucode | |
iwlwifi-agn-ucode | |
ipw2100-firmware | |
ipw2200-firmware | |
Ralink | ralink-firmware |
rtlwifi-firmware | |
Atheros | madwifi-source |
Every | kernel-firmware |
kernel-firmware-nonfree |
I have no access point in the list
If at step 5, the list is void and you have the message "non listed - edit manually", we give you another solution.
You can install the package "kernel-firmware-nonfree" via MCC and restart your computer.
rfkill
rfkill is a tool to block/unblock all radio connexions, check that yours are authorized. In a console, enter:
- If there is a line with "Soft blocked: yes" then in the console under root, enter:
- If there is a line with "Hard blocked: yes" then find the wireless button/switch on your laptop and enable it. You can see such a switch on the picture below.
Other problems
If the wireless adapter isn't detected, or if you encounter other problems, ask help in the Mageia Forum with the following information:
- Hardware information
- This command output for a PCI card:
- This command output for a USB card:
- The installed driver
To know if a driver is installed, you can use this command in a console:
Example:
Structured troubleshooting for wireless issues - WORK IN PROGRESS
Overview
This section tries to describe how to go from zero to wireless in some more-or-less easy steps and in a structured manner, from the ground up, from bottom to top.
For a high-level overview, the basic steps are always as follows:
- get your device properly recognised/initialised (driver & firmware)
- make sure your device is unblocked via rfkill (soft block) or hardware switch on laptop (hard blocked)
- be able to see wireless networks, and be able to connect to wireless networks (unencrypted for testing)
- connect and authenticate to wireless network (WPA/WPA2) and stay connected
- get your IP address configuration correct
Steps in detail
- 1. Driver/firmware installation
- 1.1 Check which physical device and chipset your have, and what is seen by the kernel
-v for verbosity is important! Otherwise information about vendor, product and device ID is omitted. This information is used to know which wireless chipset you have, and gather specific information about that chipset and required firmware.
- 1.2 Does your chipset require firmware to work? Is the firmware installed on your box? and is it already correctly loaded ?
This is actually two-fold; one part you can investigate yourself at http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers and use this table:
List of firmware packages, and what repo they are contained in | |
---|---|
Repository | Firmware |
Core Release | kernel-firmware |
Core 32 bits release | zd1211-firmware |
Non-free 32 bits release | ipw2100-firmware |
ipw2200-firmware | |
kernel-firmware-nonfree (most common firmware including Atheros, Broadcom, Intel IWL) | |
ralink-firmware (RaLink) | |
rtlwifi-firmware (Realtek) |
- 1.3 Check which firmware is loaded (might output some more information than just firmware). Enter with root rights (Ctrl C to quit):
Template:Root console
- 2. Check if the device is blocked with the commands
rfkill list all
orrfkill list wlan
See #rfkill for more details
In some cases you might also see your wireless device listed multiple times, and one is blocked and the other one is not. Those issues are mostly laptop-specific, when the wireless switch is implemented as a softbutton and this softbutton implementation requires a specific kernel module to be loaded. Often the case with some Asus, Acer, HP or Toshiba laptops. See https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5845 for an example.
- 3. Check if your device is usable and can see networks
Template:Root console
This command above, shows if your wireless device is initialised, usable and its name (on the left).
Those commands below, search for wireless networks that can be seen by your wireless chipset. Replace wlan0 by your wireless device name. Template:Root console or Template:Root console
- 4. Check if you can connect to your network
Rule of thumb: Only use one network manager. Mageia by default comes with the inhouse net_applet and the integration in Mageia Control Center via drakconnect and draknetcenter . Also see http://doc.mageia.org/mcc/4/en/content/mcc-network.html for an overview. An alternative to net_applet would be NetworkManager, which comes by default e.g. with GNOME. Since Mageia 4 those tools should not be blocking each other, but should run smoothly in parallel.
Should only show one out of net_applet or NetworkManager
For ways to switch between both have a look at the related forum thread: https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5782
- 5 .Check your IP addressing configuration
Template:Root console shows your wireless interface IP address. Template:Root console This command allows you to ping your router/gateway, if this doesn't work, check your wireless connection details
With this command, you should be able to ping internet hosts (first by IP address to rule out name resolution issues). If this is working, you have internet connection. If next step doesn't work, you only need to fix DNS.
Warning! For these two last commands, make sure your router is configured to answer to the ping command |
Example
- 1. Driver/firmware installation
My chipset is iwl 3945 ...
... and its firmware is loaded. (Ctrl C to quit and space bar to display next page).
- 2. Check if the device is blocked with the command
rfkill list
See #rfkill for more details
- 3. Check if your device is usable and can see networks
Yes, it is
No, it is not
Several networks are seen
- 4. Check if you can connect to your network
My file manager is net_applet and it is loaded
- 5. Check up IP addressing configuration
I can see my IP address ...
... my gateway address (red circled), and the ping is working (0% packet loss).
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Triage_guide#Networking_issues
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_network_configuration
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessTroubleShootingGuide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WirelessTroubleshootingProcedure
http://linux-wless.passys.nl and also http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_alles.php?
http://wireless.kernel.org/
known issues with specific drivers
- Atheros AR9462 (vendor:168c device:0034 subv:105b subd:e052), ath9k.conf needs to be created manually for MGA3,MGA4: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14398
- rtl8192cu devices (e.g. TP-LINK TL-WN823N) require a patched version of the driver rather than the one that is shipped with most distros - https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9956
- several drivers, including ath5k - https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=885
- several drivers, including Ralink RT3290 require to disable the automatic power management - https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=7225 via
iwconfig <interfacename> power off
andiwconfig <interfacename> txpower fixed
- In addition, maybe also disabling of hardware encryption https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6329 is required, this depends on the driver used
- for ath5k, you can use
rmmod -f ath5k; modprobe ath5k nohwcrypt=1
- for ath5k, you can use
- In addition, maybe also disabling of hardware encryption https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6329 is required, this depends on the driver used
- iwlwifi, but maybe others too - disable the blinking LED/softkey (flickers rapidly back-and-forth between red and blue) by creating e.g.
/etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf
with options iwlwifi led_mode=1 - https://forums.mageia.org/de/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2122 - iwlwifi and other intel drivers, where direct wifi transfers (e.g. from laptop to a workstation) are slow, especially between Intel devices, might greatly benefit from the 11n_disable bitmask parameter
Adapting this setting might double the transfer speed or more. To set this option, the module needs to be unloaded and loaded again with this option set. This can be achieved viamodprobe -rf iwldvm; modprobe -rf iwlwifi; modprobe iwlwifi 11n_disable=8
Afterwards, network service needs to be restarted. More information on this can be found in https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=8682 - iwlwifi for an Intel Wireless 3165 card may go into powersave mode
This can be prevented by creating e.g./etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf
as root withecho -e 'options iwlmvm power_scheme=1\noptions iwlwifi 11n_disable=1 bt_coex_active=N swcrypto=1' > /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf
More information on this can be found in https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11459 - ath5k - https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_Errata#ath5k_wireless_problems_on_a_HP_Compaq_Presario_CQ60-415so
- several drivers, including Broadcom, on laptops where another laptop-specific WMI module is active/loaded (hp_wmi, hp-wifi, acer-wmi) and where the interface is soft-blocked by default
(rfkill list
shows two times a wireless interface, one is not blocked, and of the other one is only soft-blocked, afterrfkill unblock all
interface is working)
solution is to blacklist that laptop-specific module as root viaecho "blacklist hp-wmi" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-mga.conf
see https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8360 and https://forums.mageia.org/de/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2122 - Broadcom BCM43142 https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=7211
- Broadcom BCM4313 ( vendor:14e4 device:4727 ) - wpa_supplicant segfaults when using net_applet with wl driver during AP connection, or times out during authentication with brcmsmac
after switching to networkmanager kernel panic and complete lockup with wl driver, but connection should work fine with brcmsmac driver https://forums.mageia.org/de/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2373 - Broadcom b43 + openfwwf vs. propr. wl driver http://archive.openmandriva.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Installing_wireless_network_cards_using_the_b43_driver and http://linuxwireless.sipsolutions.net/en/users/Drivers/b43/#Switching_between_drivers or maybe https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2329
- some Broadcom drivers, in combination with atl1c wired driver leads to conflicts. Workaround is to blacklist the atl1c driver by e.g. as root
echo "blacklist atl1c" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-mga.conf
https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5087