Krdytkyu

I am trying to connect my desktop to a wireless network. I have purchased an ASUS USB-N13 B1 adapter. I have followed instructions for installing drivers and disabling conflicting drivers. I have thoroughly searched and could not find a solution. The adapter is recognized and powered on. I have entered the ssid and password information into the wireless network configuration. Other machines can connect to this wireless network, and the machine can connect online via ethernet without issue. Here is the output of some commands which summarize my configuration, and might give some clues :

~$ cat /etc/lsb-release

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu

DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04

DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise

DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS"



~$ uname -a                                                                               

Linux petra 3.2.0-29-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 27 17:03:23 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux



~$ lsusb                                                

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0b05:17ab ASUSTek Computer, Inc.



~$ dmesg

[ 1883.823150] wlan0: authenticate with 48:5b:39:e7:25:5e (try 1)

[ 1884.020027] wlan0: authenticate with 48:5b:39:e7:25:5e (try 2)

[ 1884.220025] wlan0: authenticate with 48:5b:39:e7:25:5e (try 3)

[ 1884.420023] wlan0: authentication with 48:5b:39:e7:25:5e timed out

Any assistance would be appreciated as I have been trying to get this machine online for several weeks now to no avail.

Sincerely,
Michael.

Update : running some commands to test for a blocked wireless adapter, as suggested in the answers, seems to indicate that blocking is not the problem

~$ rfkill list all                                                             

1: phy1: Wireless LAN

    Soft blocked: no

    Hard blocked: no

~$ rfkill unblock all                                                          

~$ sudo service network-manager restart                                        

network-manager stop/waiting

network-manager start/running, process 3839

The system periodically prompts me to re-enter the network password, despite never successfully connecting. I am not making any errors in entering the network information. This network has a repeater. Is it possible that the repeater is somehow causing a problem with the connection, by having two hardware devices for the same network?

Any additional help would be greatly appreciated

Update :

Changed the wireless setup to WPA ( used to be WEP ). This seems unlikely to be the root of the problem but at least WPA is more secure. After this change, and disabling ipv6, I feel that the system is closer to working. Now, network manager will start on startup even if the machine is not plugged in to a wired connection. Wireless seems to start and I can see several of the networks available in my area. Also, it will try to connect to the network about 3 times ( prompting for a password each time ). After the third time, it gives up and disables wireless.

Some guesses then, are:
-- signal strength is too low. this is unlikely as the problem persists even with the repeater very near the adapter
-- confusion relating to the repeater : two sources with different mac addresses? perhaps it is alternately trying to connect to the main router and the repeater or something, and getting confused ?
-- configuration or driver problems ?
-- device is just plain broken ?

Some interesting behavior that may help get to the root of the problem. If I start up the computer with both the wireless adapter and a wired connection to the repeater, I am able to get internet connectivity, even after disconnecting the wired connection. However, this wired connection seems to be necessary to initiate a working wireless connection, as the machine cannot connect until the wired connection is first established.

If I reboot the machine, connectivity is lost. If I reboot the repeater, connectivity is also lost.

Update : cross posted to ubuntu forums, but no new information there yet. I'm going to try stepping through the installation process from the beginning again. ( I had some more updates but they were lost due to unreliable internet connectivity, basically, re-installing from scratch failed due to compile errors and none of several fixes that I found worked )

You would think that this would be a good sign, but there is no wireless connectivity:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"[[REDACTED]]"  Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"

          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 48:5B:39:E7:25:5E   

          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Sensitivity:0/0  

          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off

          Power Management:off

          Link Quality=100/100  Signal level=100/100  Noise level=0/100

          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0

          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Update : I don't know why, but if I boot without the wired connection and then run

sudo service network-manager restart

once the computer starts up, I seem to get a wireless connection. So, it looks like its just a matter of making sure the wireless starts correctly. I'm not sure how to explain other behaviors, but I feel like I'm closer to a solution.

Unblock wireless card

In Terminal:

rfkill list all





rfkill unblock all

Restart the network:

sudo service network-manager restart

http://www.iasptk.com/ubuntu/19593-ubuntu-1204-wifi-not-working-at-laptop-or-notebook-unblock-it

You need to update wireless driver. You can install it like this.

sudo apt-get install git

git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git

cd rtlwifi_new

make

sudo make install

Note: You will need to reinstall the driver after each kernel update.