IBM T42 and Wifi

[kurt]

Got a stock IBM T-42 that normally runs PCLOS and Wifi. Sending you a copy of the diags file after failing to get WiFi connexion.
The T42 has a 1.7 Ghz processor and 1 gb Ram. Boot took all of 4 minutes which isn't too bad from the DVD.

Cheers.

[Kevin McAleavey]

Jun 13, 2010 8:46:50 GMT -5 kurt said:

Got a stock IBM T-42 that normally runs PCLOS and Wifi. Sending you a copy of the diags file after failing to get WiFi connexion.
The T42 has a 1.7 Ghz processor and 1 gb Ram. Boot took all of 4 minutes which isn't too bad from the DVD.

Cheers.

Thanks for the diagnostics! Atheros AR5212 wifi, all's actually good as far as the hardware goes. I note from your diagnostics though that the WPA failed somehow and actually managed to crash the driver:

Jun 13 09:22:30 KNOS-32bit wpa_supplicant[2335]: CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
Jun 13 09:23:05 KNOS-32bit last message repeated 5 times
Jun 13 09:23:07 KNOS-32bit wpa_supplicant[2335]: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING - signal 15 received
Jun 13 09:23:07 KNOS-32bit wpa_supplicant[2335]: Failed to disable WPA in the driver.
Jun 13 09:23:09 KNOS-32bit wpa_supplicant[2481]: CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
Jun 13 09:23:44 KNOS-32bit last message repeated 5 times
Jun 13 09:25:49 KNOS-32bit last message repeated 18 times

Need to look into this one further to see if the AR5212 chipset is known to have any problems. KNOS is actually intended to work with "public wifi" out in the open and should be able to handle WEP, WPA and WPA2 as well. If you feel adventurous with that lappie, take it out to a library or other hotspot and see if it wakes up for you there. If not, then I'll need for you to send me a copy of a file located in /etc called wpa_supplicant.conf ... send it by email rather than here though. It will contain your key in the file. Since I'm way out of driving distance from your place, no worries but I don't think anyone else should get a chance to see it. I'd be curious to see if it works on an open wifi connection - if it does, then the problem is parsing that WPA key in the wifi manager. Unfortunately, keys can be ASCII or HEX and I suspect that perhaps it's being misread in the code.

I also note that KNOS was unable to read your hard disk and mount it - the diagnostics say that the drive is corrupted (which is possible and Windows is just stepping over the error) but it's possible also that it's encrypted or some other reason why it fails the read by KNOS to be able to mount it on your desktop.

[kurt]

You're very welcome.

Let's see. Tango is running PCLOS 2009.4 Phoenix...no WIndows on the lappy. I will run hdd diagnostics on it later. Will also go hit the Starbucks some time this week and test Wifi.

More data to come.
K

[Kevin McAleavey]

Jun 14, 2010 18:54:53 GMT -5 kurt said:

You're very welcome.

Let's see. Tango is running PCLOS 2009.4 Phoenix...no WIndows on the lappy. I will run hdd diagnostics on it later. Will also go hit the Starbucks some time this week and test Wifi.

More data to come.
K

No need to check the HDD then ... that explains it. Boot sector says that it's NTFS according to the diagnostics, and the surface didn't match. EXT2 filesystem I'll bet so there's the fail there. Disagreements on an HDD tell us to leave it alone, so that's working as intended.

Looking forward to hearing all's well once you've visited the coffee monster, still want to find out why the WPA isn't working. The wifi code is something that *we* built since BSD's gnome team never got the "network manager" going and the Linux one defies porting owing to the major differences between the two OS'.