NetworkUsAll Journal

Error for wireless request “Set Encode” (8B2A):
SET failed on device wlan0; Invalid argument.
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
Failed to bring up wlan0.

After sifting through huge amounts of postings to forums about all the tweaks and options other people had tried and failed with, I found this article, that pointed out that CentOS 5 (and for that matter RHEL 5) simply doesn’t have all the required tools to make it work.

Here’s an outline of what you need to do:

1) Add Dag Wieers repo
from HERE.
Chose your flavour from the list.
Download the file to the root directory and extract all files.

2) yum install dkms-ipw3945

3) chkconfig –level 345 NetworkManager on
chkconfig –level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on

4) Reboot

You will now have an icon in your system tray from which you can simply configure your wireless connections.

Posted in: linux, network by Julian Perry / Tags: 3945ABG, CentOS, chkconfig, core components, dag wieers, device error, dual boot, google, invalid argument, networkmanager, plain and simple truth, repo, root directory, server, sifting through, sony vaio, sony vaio laptop, system tray, vaio, vital applications, wireless, wireless adapter, wireless connections

5 Comments

It’s at the core of any computer system. If you use any computer in the world, it is 99.9% likely to be connected to a network of some kind.
The internet is the biggest network. If you want to communicate with anyone or anything then you will certainly be doing it across a network.
The technology has been around for decades and even now, with the latest layer 3 network switches, your network can be exposed to traffic jams. Keeping an eye on the traffic on your network is vital to keeping your PCs or servers working how they should.
A network monitoring tool is a must. There are numerous ways of setting about monitoring your network and I shall lay out some basics here.
A sudden drop in internet performance or commumication with another machine on your network indicates a network traffic issue of some kind. Take a look at your network device activity lights, PC, hub/switch, router, anything where the data activity lights are flashing like crazy when you’re not actually doing anything indicates high network activity. Try to isolate the source or target machine by eliminating potential machines, one at a time, by unpluging the network cable from each machine in turn. When the lights stop flashing you know you have just found a machine involved.
The next step is to try and identify the cause on the machine you have identified.
Identifying the process that is sending or receiving large quantities of data will get you 75% of the way to the solution.
MS Windows has the Task Manager. Processes taking up most memory and CPU are the give aways.
Linux has the “top” command which runs in a terminal session and provides similar information.

If you do not have access to other machines on your network, you are going to need a network monitoring tool, to try and identify where the problems are coming from. There are many such tools available for download. Nmap for Linux and Zenmap for Windows are free analysis tools which allow you to identify which port numbers are in use by each machine on your network.
Network.

Posted in: network by Julian Perry / Tags: commumication, computer system, free analysis tools, hub switch, internet performance, layer 3, monitoring, ms windows, netw, network, network cable, network monitoring tool, network traffic, networking, nmap, port numbers, quantities, server, switch router, target machine, task manager processes, terminal session, traffic issue, traffic jams

9 Comments