Page 1 of 1

Trouble with Wifi Connection

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 11:08 am
by goonanism
I'm very excited to get into my RPi but pretty useless when it comes to most hardware and networking issues.

I purchased a Edimax Wifi Adapter but am having trouble getting it to work. When I go into the wifi config in the GUI I can scan for and connect to my wifi router. So far so go.

However when I go to a web page I get an error saying Cannot resolve hostname. I have also noticed that in the Wifi Config no IP address has been assigned (or at least no IP address is being displayed).

I suspect it's a DNS issue bit that is just wild guesses. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Trouble with Wifi Connection

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 11:15 pm
by bgirardot
Can you open up the terminal program and type

Code: Select all

ifconfig -a
and then paste the results in here?

Also, you could check your router to see if the router knows about the RPi, there is usually a web page admin page for home routers.

The command listed above will let us know if/how the network interfaces on your RPi are configured.

Re: Trouble with Wifi Connection

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 2:33 am
by goonanism
Hi bgirardot - thanks so much for the reply.

The Pi isn't showing up in the list of devices on the Router's web interface.

The output you asked for is:

Code: Select all

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr b8:27:eb:cc:0d:97  
          inet addr:192.168.1.88  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:31 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:5875 (5.7 KiB)  TX bytes:5868 (5.7 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 80:1f:02:82:c1:ce  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:34 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:155 (155.0 B)  TX bytes:155 (155.0 B)
Thanks again!

Re: Trouble with Wifi Connection

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 3:41 pm
by bgirardot
That is interesting. It shows your wired ethernet connection (eth0) is configured and working somewhat, and it shows that your wireless connection is not configured, but also is getting some sort of traffic or attempts at traffic, or it was configured for a short time and received traffic, but now no longer is configured.

I can explain how to configure your wireless connection manually, but it will take me a bit to get it written down and double checked.

For additional info, you can look at the configuration files for your network interfaces (abbreviated "if" in the linux world):

Code: Select all

cat /etc/network/interfaces
And for how your wifi interface in particular is configured:

Code: Select all

sudo cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
And you might as well list (ls) your usb devices so we can make sure it is seen by the usb system and what exactly it is:

Code: Select all

lsusb
You are going to need to know how your wifi network is configured:
What is its SSID, the exact name of the network you see listed when you scan for networks in any wifi tool
What kind of encryption it uses, typically WPA or WPA2, but could be none or WEP
What the password for the network is if there is one
Is there a DHCP server
What IP network addresses are typically used, often 192.168.1.x or 192.168.0.x or a 10.x.x.x network