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Fedora 10 wireless issues

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I'm about to give up. Fedora 10, as noted below, is a gorgeous and well-documented distro. But I have had persistent problems with my wireless connection. These days, Web access is my main home computer use.

1. Fedora defaults to the Network Manager "service" to manage wireless devices. That is, it uses EITHER Network Manager OR Network. Since I've been having so much trouble with this (other wireless networks show up but mine doesn't, when it does connect I often get a kernel bug message, the connection disappears after a logout), I went to System>Administration>Services and turned off Network Manager, then enabled and restarted Network (an alternative service to manage connections). Then I edited the Network settings to make sure those were right, and reboot.

2. The boot process took a lot longer -- and failed. I saw something that other folks have reported -- it tried to connect using completely different encryption keys (verified in iwconfig). I managed to force a connection (command line reset of encryption key, ifup eth1), then reboot to see if it was persistent, and never did manage to connect again.

So I went back to the Network Manager, and did get connected after a long mysterious delay. But I'm getting pretty frustrated. If wireless worked, I'd be a happy Fedora camper. Everything else works fine (well, occasionally my display resets oddly, but that's easily fixed). I understand that no distro can be counted on to work well with every setup, and have about concluded that my machine just doesn't like F10's wireless management.

PCLinuxOS was far more reliable in that respect. I indicated that I might have to distro-hop a bit, and I might be there again. Dunno what to try next. Maybe Mint (based on Ubuntu), or maybe ZenWalk (based on Slackware, which I've never tried). But it makes me kind of sad. Fedora is very handsome and feels familiar. I wanted it to work. :(

Next day: I fiddled around with several things, today. First, some experiments trying to use the IPv4 settings under Edit Connections. Might have been making progress -- but then it all fell apart again. So, second I wound up UNchecking the "automatically connect" button, and find that, so far, at least my local network shows up in the list, and one click connects me. Still mysterious...

Comments

Christopher said…
I have been trying to work around the wireless now for 8 months. When I install Fedora 10 it works fine for about 7 or 8 logins. It them deteriorates to 0 and I can't get the network manager to even recognize the wireless connection. I can ifup wlan0 and there are no errors. But Network Manager doesn't even seem to think that there is a wireless potential here. Don't know what to think. Any help?
Christopher
whereisamerica@gmail.com
September 16, 2009 at 11:55 AM
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