[arch-general] network WTF

[Jaime Oyarzun Knittel]

David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> Got a bit of network weirdness going on here.  2 different Arch laptops,
> an old one and a new one, with completely different hardware (and also
> i686 vs. x86_64), but both are completely up to date with the latest
> repos.  On the old (i686) one, "iwlist scan" works fine from the command
> line, as a non-root user.  On the new one, no dice - I need to be root
> to get back results.

Normally 'iwlist wlanX scan' as user just reads a previous scan, and
with root privileges it does actually scan for networks.

> 
> What makes this even more annoying is that apparently some of the
> wireless tools I'm using suffer from this restriction as well.  So on
> the old laptop, kwifimanager and knemo show accurate info about the
> current connection (bit rate, link quality, etc.) while on the new
> laptop these come up empty.

Maybe it's a group issue? Are the users in the 'network' group? Can you
associate manually to an access point?

> 
> Anyone have any idea what's causing this and/or how to work around it?
> Surely I don't need to run kwifimanager and knemo as root to do it.
> 
> I'm guessing there's some obscure setting that's different between the 2
> machines that's controlling this, but I have no clue what it could be.
> 

If it's not a permission issue, my guess is that the wireless cards send
different results (assuming they're different cards).

Maybe you should start the 'broken' machine with a LiveCD from another
distro or ArchLinux i686 LiveCD to see if it's Arch failing or your
hardware.

I hope it helps.

-- 
mitoyarzun
http://www.archlinux.cl/