Improved Network Wizard (and rc.network)

[Dougal]

the screenshot indicates, that eth1 is used.
In an older version of Muppy (008.3, based on Puppy 3), someone solved to start with:
ifconfig ra0 up &

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 840#234840

Mark

That makes absolutely no sense... it would imply the wrong interface had been configured and also he commented out dhcpcd!

[High Q]

Your screenshot misses the important part... you need to scroll to the right in the details window to see what the actual error is...

I have copied the entire message in the area above the window.

[popee]

Wireless network setup succeeds without difficulty, but the network is not restarted upon [re]boot. Network Wizard does not appear to retain any settings.

Are you sure the settings were not retained? If you select "save" in the wizard it should save profiles in /etc/network-wizard.
To see why it doesn't connect when you boot, look in /tmp/bootsysinit.log.

Dogone is correct that there is a problem autoconnecting to the internet upon [re]boot. The wizard does indeed save the profile, but an internet connection is not automagically made upon boot. From what I've seen, you have to manually go back into the wizard, load your profile, then grab an IP.

I have personally tried two different computers and have seen a number of other messages around the forum from those who are reporting the same.

Just FYI.

[JustGreg]

When one gets the IP address starting with 168, it means that dhcpcd did not find the server to get a correct address. The 168 IP address is a default address and does not work. I have gotten the same address when I thought I had a wireless connection, but the connection was not complete. Getting that address is an indication of failure to connect to the dhcpcd server in the network router.

I have also gotten the failure to find wpa crtl error. It has occurred when I am using wpa_supplicant and had an error in the name of wpa2.conf file or a wpa2.conf file that had an internal error (misspelling, or incomplete information).

I hope this helps you, David S.

[Béèm]

When one gets the IP address starting with 168

You mean 169 I suppose?
See

[davids45]

G'day all,
Tried again last night with 4.1 and the WPA - wireless wizard.
Quite erratic and frustrating behaviour.
Tried the manual method, using the conf. file generated by the wizard in wpa_profiles. rxvt reported an Invalid passphrase length, 64 but was expecting 8...63.
The long Key-phrase I see with iwconfig with a good connection in Pup 4.04 or 3 is not the one I see in the conf file.

Then using the self-edited default(?) wpa_supplicant.conf file in wpa_profiles (not the wizard generated one) via the manual method, rxvt told me I was associating with my router (and RutilT also) but no IP addrress eventuated so after about 10 'associations', a line appeared which included "Ctrl Event Connected" and "completed" but there was no internet connection or IP address. rxvt stopped at this but without the # prompt.
I see no wpa_supplicant directory created in /var/run when this happens, so is there a failure to start up wpa_supplicant somewhere?

Béèm is correct that the useless "Successful" IP address starts with 169.xxx.xx.xx but getting this several times, I noticed the other numbers in these "addresses" are not constant. RutilT reports the association dropping in and out while this "Successful" box is displayed so something is still going on in the background.

Tried copying a working wpa_supplicant conf file from 4.04 to 4.1. Did not get the 64 character error in the key phrase, and this file got me connected once out of four tries. Gave up after that.

As wireless can be slow to sort itself out even when it gets connected, I wonder if part of the wizard's problem is not giving enough time to establish a connection. Previous wizards have allowed 60 seconds and sometimes needed almost all of this before reporting a good connection/IP address. Can this time be changed somewhere?

I see wlan0 is always there on start-up so I assume that ndiswrapper is not part of the problem? I tried rmmod then modprobing this without any obvious change.

David S.

[JustGreg]

Yes, Beem, the address should be 169 and not 168. Thank you for noting the error. I found that typos are the result of going from a small keyboard (2goPC) to a normal size. It is just another thing to watch out for.

David S. If you are entering the pass phrase key in wpa.conf file, there are two ways of entering it. If you are entering the ASCII text for the pass phrase, then use:
psk="mypasskey"

If you are entering the hexadecimal value of the pass phrase, then use;
psk=e0dda6ea2a32043d7416cdada5d95c8f754d8a652af27236a714d49a748b3f47
The use of quotes (") is for the ASCII text.. I suspect that error message about exceeding 63 characters is the result of using the hexadecimal value with quotes.

II hope this helps.

[davids45]

G'day Greg,
I use quotes to enter my simple word pass-key phrase for my WPA home network. I would never be bothered typing these ginormous 60+ character passwords.

In last night's trials, I was just copying, via geany, multiple lines from one conf file to another.

But now that you've mentioned it, I think that some of these long passwords, generated by the wizard from somewhere, did have quotes while others did not. I will look more closely in the next attempts to solve this problem.

Thanks for the reminder,

David S.

[Dougal]

Your screenshot misses the important part... you need to scroll to the right in the details window to see what the actual error is...

I have copied the entire message in the area above the window.

Oh, you did, sorry...

What that message means is that wpa_supplicant is not running at all...
So you need to see what the messages in the progressbar say before it finishes... also maybe run the wizard from a terminal (net-setup.sh -d) and see if you get any error messages.

[Dougal]

Dogone is correct that there is a problem autoconnecting to the internet upon [re]boot. The wizard does indeed save the profile, but an internet connection is not automagically made upon boot. From what I've seen, you have to manually go back into the wizard, load your profile, then grab an IP.

But what kind of messages do you get in /tmp/bootsysinit.log?
Is it another case of the wireless scan finding nothing?
In that case it would most likely be a driver problem, so it would be good to get a list of the drivers it occurs with (maybe it's only one?), the kernel version people use (i.e they use 4.1 or 4.1retro) and probably try and google and see if it's a known issue -- since if the wireless scan finds nothing, it isn't really a wizard bug... (I could add something to allow the user to select a profile to be "forcefully" used on boot, but that's kinda ugly...)

[popee]

Dogone is correct that there is a problem autoconnecting to the internet upon [re]boot. The wizard does indeed save the profile, but an internet connection is not automagically made upon boot. From what I've seen, you have to manually go back into the wizard, load your profile, then grab an IP.

But what kind of messages do you get in /tmp/bootsysinit.log?
Is it another case of the wireless scan finding nothing?
In that case it would most likely be a driver problem, so it would be good to get a list of the drivers it occurs with (maybe it's only one?), the kernel version people use (i.e they use 4.1 or 4.1retro) and probably try and google and see if it's a known issue -- since if the wireless scan finds nothing, it isn't really a wizard bug... (I could add something to allow the user to select a profile to be "forcefully" used on boot, but that's kinda ugly...)

I confess that I have not loaded any special drivers for my wireless card, but did not think I needed to since it works perfectly. Like I said, after boot I can reopen the connection wizard, locate and load my saved profile, grab an IP via the Auto DHCP button, and it works perfectly. It just does not do this automatically upon reboot.

Here is my bootsysinit log:

Code: Select all

VERSION UPDATE
LOAD KERNEL MODULES
LOAD SWAP
MISC. SYSTEM SETUP
WAIT MODULES LOADED
ls: cannot access /sys/bus/pcmcia/devices/*/modalias: No such file or directory
USER SELECTED MODULES
SETUP SERVICES
FATAL: Error inserting battery (/lib/modules/2.6.25.16/kernel/drivers/acpi/battery.ko): No such device
RECOGNISE MEDIA DEVICES
Loading "us" keyboard map... Loading /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/us.map
MISC. DESKTOP STUFF
PERSONAL BOOT SCRIPT
cups: started scheduler.
Starting PCMCIA services:

If looks like it's not seeing my pcmcia card at this point in the boot process. It seems to see it fine after fully completing the entire bootup though, since it appears in the connection wizard and I can successfully set it up and establish a connection. Also, after boot I can find /sys/bus/pcmcia/devices/*/modalias down the folder path.

Could it be a matter of not enough time allotted in the boot process for the card to initialize?

In any case, I agree that this may not be a connection wizard issue, so perhaps I need to take this matter to another thread. Just posting here in case a connection to the wizard was seen by those far more knowledgeable than I. I don't want to muddy this thread w/ non-relevant issues.

[Dougal]

Tried the manual method, using the conf. file generated by the wizard in wpa_profiles. rxvt reported an Invalid passphrase length, 64 but was expecting 8...63.

Ok, that's a bug in the last version.
It seems like in the wpa_supplicant config the psk should be quoted only if it's the actual passphrase -- the 64 char key shouldn't (and it seems that's how wpa_supplicant actually differentiates them! that's why it complains about it being more than 63 chars long -- since it's looking at the 64-char key when it expected a 8-63 char phrase...).

[Dougal]

I confess that I have not loaded any special drivers for my wireless card, but did not think I needed to since it works perfectly. Like I said, after boot I can reopen the connection wizard, locate and load my saved profile, grab an IP via the Auto DHCP button, and it works perfectly. It just does not do this automatically upon reboot.

It doesn't have to do with any special modules: maybe there's one driver (or more than one) in one of the kernels that has problems with scanning.
That's why people should give info when they report these things, so I can try and see what's in common with all of them.

If looks like it's not seeing my pcmcia card at this point in the boot process. It seems to see it fine after fully completing the entire bootup though, since it appears in the connection wizard and I can successfully set it up and establish a connection. Also, after boot I can find /sys/bus/pcmcia/devices/*/modalias down the folder path.

Could it be a matter of not enough time allotted in the boot process for the card to initialize?

Well, from the looks of your bootsysinit.log, rc.network didn't run at all! There are just no messages from it whatsoever... so I don't know what's going on.

After boot, you can try and right-click on the "Connect" icon on the desktop and select "Autoconnect to ethernet/wireless" and see what happens -- it is supposed to run the same code as on startup, so we can see what happens (it will redirect all output to a file in /tmp, "network-connect.log" or something).

[Dougal]

I have posted another update on the parent post:
- fix the problem with quoting of psk
- make ip_scan default to 2 when using ndiswrapper

[MU]

updated pets attached.
Mark

[popee]

Well, from the looks of your bootsysinit.log, rc.network didn't run at all! There are just no messages from it whatsoever... so I don't know what's going on.

Oops, sorry. . . that was me. I had those messages piping into another log file for troubleshooting purposes.

You're right, the bootsysinit file is indeed complaining about failing during the network scan. After bootup, however, I can right-click on the Connect icon and zip right onto the net w/ no problem. I even have WEP turned on.

[davids45]

G'day Dougal,
Thanks for persisting with my WPA problem in 4.1.
Couldn't do too many tests last night, had to go to a film premiere.
But I did confirm the issue with the quotes around the long pass-phrase when "Saving" a new profile, so the patch should be a step closer to the fix.

When trying to find what's happening, as well as the wizard window, I have 2 rxvt windows open (one on iwconfig, one for a manual wpa_supplicant try), 1 ROX looking at the /var/run directory to see if wpa_supplicant runs, and 1 RutilT open to watch the connections and any IP addresses.

On booting late last night, wpa_supplicant did not run (nothing created in /var/run) but if I go through the wizard starting from "Scan", selecting my router from those on offer, loading the previously saved profile with the non-quotation-marked long phrase then using that profile, there is a wpa_supplicant start-up but it fails to connect in 30 seconds reporting various handshake or association end-points in the details box when failure of WPA occurs.

If I open the wizard then go straight to AutoDCHP, a file of some sort is created in /var/run/ (contents are a number) but no wpa_supplicant starts up nor any association with the router.

Will let you know how I go with the new pet patch.

David S.

[sullysat]

Hi Dougal,

I came across this thread while looking for solutions to the issue of my system not auto starting the internet connection. I read your response to popee and tried the "autoconnect" option from the Connect icon. My log file follows:

configuring network interface wlan0
Configuring interface wlan0 to network <ssid> with iwconfig...
cheching if interface wlan0 is alive.../etc/rc.d/rc.network: line 98: 2899 Terminated gtkdialog3 --program NETWIZ_Connecting_DIALOG
yes
/etc/rc.d/rc.network: line 81: gxmessage: command not found
ress = 00:0a:e9:00:31:72
Info, wlan0: broadcasting for a lease
Debug, wlan0: sending DHCP_DISCOVER with xid 0x4a29d720
Debug, wlan0: waiting on select for 20 seconds
Debug, wlan0: got a packet with xid 0x4a29d720
Info, wlan0: offered 192.168.1.105 from 192.168.1.1
Debug, wlan0: sending DHCP_REQUEST with xid 0x4a29d720
Debug, wlan0: waiting on select for 20 seconds
Debug, wlan0: got a packet with xid 0x4a29d720
Info, wlan0: checking 192.168.1.105 is available on attached networks
Debug, wlan0: sending ARP probe #1
Debug, wlan0: sending ARP probe #2
Debug, wlan0: sending ARP probe #3
Debug, wlan0: sending ARP claim #1
Debug, wlan0: sending ARP claim #2
Info, wlan0: leased 192.168.1.105 for 86400 seconds
Info, wlan0: no renewal time supplied, assuming 43200 seconds
Info, wlan0: no rebind time supplied, assuming 75600 seconds
Info, wlan0: adding IP address 192.168.1.105/24
Info, wlan0: adding default route via 192.168.1.1 metric 0
Info, wlan0: adding route to 169.254.0.0/16 metric 0
Debug, wlan0: writing /etc/resolv.conf
Debug, wlan0: writing /var/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-wlan0.info
Debug, wlan0: exec "/etc/dhcpcd.sh" "/var/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-wlan0.info" "new"
Debug, wlan0: forking to background

It ran right away and connected me without any issue at all.

I'm running 4.1 with the retro kernel on a Dell Cpx laptop, 500MHz, 128MB RAM, 6GB HDD, Full Install.

My pcmcia wireless card is seen as 'hostap_cs' in 4.1. It is recognized as 'orinoco_cs' on earlier versions of Puppy but has always been recognized without a problem.

Hope this helps you solve the problem. Thanks for all your effort.

Sully

[Dougal]

On booting late last night, wpa_supplicant did not run (nothing created in /var/run)

I think the directory is deleted when it quits, you should look in bootsysinit.log to know for sure (but also remove old config files and try afresh, to make sure they don't cause any problems).

there is a wpa_supplicant start-up but it fails to connect in 30 seconds reporting various handshake or association end-points in the details box when failure of WPA occurs.

D'oh! I meant to raise it to 60 to see if it will solve some problems... will let you know what needs to be done to increase it.

[Dougal]

My log file follows:
/etc/rc.d/rc.network: line 81: gxmessage: command not found

Well, that shows one (minor) problem: the new Puppy seems to be missing gxmessage!

It ran right away and connected me without any issue at all.

I am assuming the log file you posted is the one from the "Connect" icon attempt, right? (/tmp/network-connect.log)
What I need to know is what bootsysinit.log shows, since that's where the failure to connect on boot will show -- but as you can see, the code seems to be working, so it must be something related to the HW initializing.