Computer: Gateway MT 6452 Laptop
Operating system: Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron - Kernel 2.6.24-17-generic
Hardware Issue: Unable to log in to WEP network w/ RTL8187 internal wireless card.

For some reason a week ago, my wireless stopped working on my Gateway MT652 with a RTL 8187 internal wireless card. Since then, I have done a lot of stupid things to try to get it running again. I can't say for certain everything I did or didn't do, but here is what I know about my system right now.


Ndiswrapper is running and as far as I can tell, configured properly. Programs such as wifi-radar can see all the available networks.

lsmod does list ndiswrapper. I have loaded it with the win98 driver netrtuw. I have removed the driver libcmd and can no longer find it. Was it important?

iwconfig has this to say:


lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSIDff/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:20 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Here is lshw -C network:


WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: 88E8038 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller
vendor: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: 14
serial: 00:e0:b8:d4:43:64
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=sky2 driverversion=1.20 firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.103 latency=0 module=sky2 multicast=yes
*-network
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 1
logical name: wlan0
serial: 00:c0:a8:e3:c5:0b
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ndiswrapper+netrtuw driverversion=1.52+Realtek Semiconductor Corp. multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g


Finally, here are the customized contents of /etc/network/interfaces


auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
#iface eth1 inet dhcp

auto eth2
#iface eth2 inet dhcp

auto ath0
#iface ath0 inet dhcp

auto wmaster0

iface eth0 inet dhcp

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-key I don't know how to stop the smilies!!
wireless-essid ktbug

auto wlan0

Bear in mind that, being a moron I have half-assed my way though several terminal based guides here on the forums and have committed such atrocities as putting files in /etc/default named NetworkManager which only contain the phrase "exit." I would like to get that applet running again.

So, that's my problem in a nutshell. My curiosity writes cheques my brain can't cash.