Error connecting to wireless network

**Zorrokan Zenovka** · July 3rd, 2008

I set up Ubuntu on a laptop today, the installation went very smoothly, I'm very happy with how it is performing, however, whilst the computer can see that there is a wireless network available (it can even gauge the strength of the connection, which is very strong), when I try to connect to it I get this error message:

Error connecting to wireless network

The requested wireless nework requires security capabilities
unsupported by your hardware.

Is there a way to connect?

Regards

Adam

**nixscripter** · July 3rd, 2008

It depends upon what drivers you're using. Many of them, for example, cannot connect to WPA networks, and some cannot even connect to WEP networks (though this is rare). What encryption is the network using?

It all comes down to: what card are you using? You can get a list of devices detected on your system by typing this command in Terminal:

Code:

lspci

Then you can figure out what driver it uses.

**Zorrokan Zenovka** · July 4th, 2008

lspci returns:

00:00.0 Host bridge: ALi Corporation M1644/M1644T Northbridge+Trident (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ALi Corporation PCI to AGP Controller
00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:04.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c3)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ali Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 01)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533/M1535 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV/V/V+]
00:08.0 Bridge: Ali Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
00:11.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC100 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with ZV Support (rev 32)
00:11:1 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC100 PCI to Cardbus Bridge with AV support (rev 32)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade SPAil (rev82)

I can't get a wired connection either

**Zorrokan Zenovka** · July 4th, 2008

update: I've just uninstalled network manager via Synaptic and have installed wicd (wicd_1.4.2-1-all.deb). Now, when I try to connect, Wicd says:
[my network name]:resetting IP address
and then
[my network name]

btaining IP address

afterwhich it returns to
Not connected

**nixscripter** · July 5th, 2008

I still believe the problem is in software that the network manager/wicd is trying to use.

Is there a driver loaded for wireless? Try this:

Code:

lsmod | grep ieee

You should get some lines back.

**nixscripter** · July 6th, 2008

Also, for a better idea, try this command:

Code:

sudo lshw -C network

By the way, put the output in [code] tags so that it's more readable.

**jamesapnic** · July 6th, 2008

It sounds like you need to install wpa_supplicant maybe.
There are a post on this before which you can find here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=263136

Hope this helps you.