[DONE] Can't connect to SSID "Doña Ana's"

[larrydc]

Hello all,
I have noted all the required dumps requested by doktor5000, but since I have no interent connection from Mageia 4.1, I can't run them & post at the same time. So I am hoping for a simple solution from you experts. Otherwise I will plow through all the steps & suggestions I have saved for reading off line when I boot up Mageia 4.1 again. BTW if someone with an answer prefers to write in Spanish, that would be fine as well.

I've searched the forums and have saved to disk all the different ways to connect to Mageia 4.1 installed from the DVD yesterday (Not the live DVD, I prefer & have set up XFCE).
My wireless card is Intel Pro/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN. It takes driver iwl4965.
The 2 Debian distros (Makulu 6.1 XFCE & PicarOS Diego, if you are wondering) I have running on separate partitions on this IBM ThinkPad T61 both connect to the subject SSID.
I have never achieved a sucessful connection except when the SSID was seen as:
Doña Ana's

However, Mageia shows this SSID as:
Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's

The unsucessful file /mnt/sda7/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's" consists of:

Code: Select all

BOOTPROTO=dhcp
METRIC=35
USERCTL=yes
RESOLV_MODS=no
WIRELESS_MODE=Managed
WIRELESS_ESSID="Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's"
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=s:tse6Tjua
WIRELESS_WPA_DRIVER=wext
WIRELESS_WPA_REASSOCIATE=no
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6TO4INIT=no
ACCOUNTING=no
DHCP_CLIENT=dhclient
NEEDHOSTNAME=no
PEERDNS=yes
PEERYP=yes
PEERNTPD=no

Thanks for your help. I hope to be able to contribute myself when I can establish a wireless connection to the internet.

[doktor5000]

I have never achieved a sucessful connection except when the SSID was seen as:
Doña Ana's

You mean under Mageia or under Debian? And when was it seen as "Doña Ana's" ? Also. how did you create the connection in the first place?

You probably should create a bugreport for that. https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly

I think you could try to switch to networkmanager, that's described in viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5782
Another option could be to edit the config file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlXXXXXX to put the real SSID in there,
and rename the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Doña Ana's via e.g.

Code: Select all

mv "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's" "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Doña Ana's"

although I'm not sure the latter filename and the SSID is quoted properly everywhere in drakxtools.

Apart from that, IMHO that's a pretty bad choice for an SSID but that probably won't help you much further

[larrydc]

Sorry taking so long to get back. I have to reboot into another distro in order to read the forum or answer.

I have never achieved a sucessful connection except when the SSID was seen as:
Doña Ana's

You mean under Mageia or under Debian? And when was it seen as "Doña Ana's" ? Also. how did you create the connection in the first place?

No I never got Mageia 4.1 to connect to "Doña Ana's". In the 2 Debian distros I mentioned the connection is just click on the "not-connected or no network" icon in the system tray. Choose wireless and there would be Doña Ana's in the list.
The issue therefore would seem to be that prior to any connection, Mageia shows among the available wireless routers:
Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's
And that never connects.
After following your instructions & then trying NetWorkManager all to no avail yesterday, being a Linux distro dilletante (& retired & on vacation at the home of my mother-in-law, whose name is "Doña Ana" ... thence the choice of the router name), I installed an Ubuntu variant Centrych that boasted more fine grained setup. This time I found & ran nm-connection-editor as root. I just created a new Wireless connection from scratch beyong the correct MAC address for the wireless adapter. This let me add the ESSID=E8:AB:FA:16:1E:F9 in addition to the SSID=Doña Ana's. I added the WPA/WPA2 password and just to be contrary, I even changed the name of the connection from Wireless1 to Doña Ana's. That was it. Close the dialog & connected.

You probably should create a bugreport for that. https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly

I am going to since I can't get much use out of Mageia 4.1 w/o a connection to the Internet. While I certainly go to all the trouble of renaming the wireless router & changing the configurations of the 3 other devices connected to it, as a proponent of Linux I refuse to: Two of the other devices are Android smartphones & the other is my wife's laptop running Windows 7.1. I cannot support any distro that lacks the capabilities of the "Dark side".
I especially liked the way the installation sans internet flawslessly installed nvidia 340. This Ubuntu 12.04 LTS distro only installed nvidia 173. I've been a Mageia fan from when it came with my favorite text-editor, cooledit. Sadly, it's no longer available even via urpmi.

I think you could try to switch to networkmanager,

It made no difference.

...edit the config file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlXXXXXX to put the real SSID in there,
and rename the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Doña Ana's via e.g.

Code: Select all

mv "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's" "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/Doña Ana's"

Anytime a connection was attempted my old friend, "/Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's" reappeared and the connection failed.

...IMHO that's a pretty bad choice for an SSID but that probably won't help you much further

Besides being a tribute to my host, if it's hard to connect to, it serves as a distinguishing feature of the distros that can connect to it.

As I said, I will report it as a bug & when it gets fixed, I'll be back to Mageia as an rpm distro. For now it's off to either Fedora 20 or PCLinuxOS 2010.

Thanks for your prompt & pertinent help. You are definitely "a distinguishing feature" of the Mageia distro.

[doktor5000]

at the home of my mother-in-law, whose name is "Doña Ana" ... thence the choice of the router name)

As mentioned, it's a pretty bad idea. Consider this: You're sending out personal details and the MAC adress of your router.
Call it "wifi" or "wireless" or something else unobtrusive. Nevertheless, connection should still work, that was just a privacy-related hint.

I think you could try to switch to networkmanager,

It made no difference.

Well, it should - if it works for other distros, it should work on Mageia too. Also, how did you install the necessary packages for networkmanager without internet connection?
Would be helpful if you could provide some logs for networkmanager. Please show the output as root of

Code: Select all

systemctl status NetworkManager

and it could also be helpful to enable verbose logging, for that edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

and add/change this

Code: Select all

[logging]
level=debug

[doktor5000]

at the home of my mother-in-law, whose name is "Doña Ana" ... thence the choice of the router name)

...Consider this: You're sending out personal details and the MAC adress of your router.
...Nevertheless, connection should still work, that was just a privacy-related hint.

Point taken. But I agree it should work.

I think you could try to switch to networkmanager,

It made no difference.

Well, it should - if it works for other distros, it should work on Mageia too.

That' s my point as well.

Also, how did you install the necessary packages for networkmanager without internet connection?

It seemed to be already there. I just ran 'NetworkManager' & got no errors. When I ran ' man NetworkManager' it explained it to be a background app. So I made sure it was the only one running but still never got "Doña Ana's" to show up. Only "Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's" which wouldn't authenticate even though the password was entered correctly.

Anyway I submitted it as a bug & I am running Fedora 20 installed from an install only DVD just as Mageia 4.1 was. No problem there. It does seem to use NetworManager exclusively.

Not that it's much help but Fedora is rpm based as well & also insists on the foolishly difficult to type correctly "wlp3s0" nomenclature. So here's the output on Fedora

Code: Select all

# systemctl status NetworkManager
NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sat 2014-10-25 08:33:11 BOT; 3h 54min ago
 Main PID: 691 (NetworkManager)
   CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service
           ├─ 691 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon
           └─1059 /sbin/dhclient -d -sf /usr/libexec/nm-dhcp-helper -pf /var/run/dhclient-wlp3s0.pid -lf /var/lib/NetworkManager/dhclient-d...

Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: <info> (wlp3s0): device state change: ip-config -> ip-check (reason 'none') [70 80 0]
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: <info> Activation (wlp3s0) Stage 5 of 5 (IPv4 Commit) complete.
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: <info> (wlp3s0): device state change: ip-check -> secondaries (reason 'none') [80 90 0]
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: <info> (wlp3s0): device state change: secondaries -> activated (reason 'none') [90 100 0]
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 dhclient[1059]: bound to 10.0.0.6 -- renewal in 129189 seconds.
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: bound to 10.0.0.6 -- renewal in 129189 seconds.
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: <info> NetworkManager state is now CONNECTED_GLOBAL
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: <info> Policy set 'Doña Ana's' (wlp3s0) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: <info> Activation (wlp3s0) successful, device activated.
Oct 25 08:33:20 dhcppc2 NetworkManager[691]: <info> startup complete

Thanks again for your help. But I will not be installing Mageia again until this is fixed at the install level which would require a new iso. So here's hoping it get's fixed in the next beta. If you would like me to try that, please PM me & I'll download it, install it & see if it recognizes the "ñ".

[doktor5000]

When switching to networkmanager, you should remove the current interface.
Try via http://doc.mageia.org/mcc/4/en/content/ ... --del.html
Or delete the config files manually as root

Code: Select all

rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlp3s0
rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/*

[doktor5000]

also insists on the foolishly difficult to type correctly "wlp3s0" nomenclature.

That can be changed if you insist on that: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwar ... faceNames/

But I will not be installing Mageia again until this is fixed at the install level which would require a new iso. So here's hoping it get's fixed in the next beta. If you would like me to try that, please PM me & I'll download it, install it & see if it recognizes the "ñ".

It won't be automagically fixed if you don't even submit a bug report about it. https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly

[duncangareth]

For what it's worth, I have had several clients experiencing similar failures, and with every one of them the problem was having a space in the middle of the SSID. Try an underscore. It might sort the problem out. I have no idea how the average wifi setup deals with "ñ".

[srtxg]

I suspect a character conversion error.
Specifically, I suspect the real SSID is NOT "Doña Ana's" (which can be written as "Do\xc3\xb1a Ana's") but "Do\xf1a Ana's" instead.
Try editing the config file and puting that one instead.

If that was the problem, it is indeed a bug (GUI tools shouldn't do character conversion on an *identifier*).

If the space is the problem, try using "\x20" instead of the space (and if that solves it, then the bug is somewhere in the reading of the config file)

[larrydc]

Now that I'm back using Mageia 5. Let me put this to rest.

I did give up and moved back to the Debian distros of PicarOS, Emmabuntus & Makulu 7. XFCE on the ThinkPad T61 I was using while vacationing in Cochabamba.

What I found out was that it was the 'apostrophe' in the router/repeater "Doña Ana's" that was messing up what the network app used to identify the unit.

I am no longer in Bolivia at my "suegra"'s home so I can't test Mageia 5 on that router.

But with all the help I want to explain the problem correctly.

Thanks again.

[doktor5000]

Please mark the thread accordingly by editing the topic of the first post and prefix it by [DONE], thanks