Unable to set parameters

From: Sam Holden (sholden_at_cs.usyd.edu.au)
Date: 2002-08-30 04:13:15 UTC


I have a D-Link DWL-520 PCI card using the hostap_pci driver. It works fine and with the DWL-650 in my laptop I am free to roam around the pool browsing the web.

However, I can't change the settings using iwconfig or iwpriv. The possibly relevant details are:

sh-2.05b# uname -a
Linux foo 2.4.17-686 #2 Sat Dec 22 21:58:49 EST 2001 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux sh-2.05b# iwconfig -v
iwconfig Version 25 

          Compatible with Wireless Extension v15 or earlier,
          Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v15.

wlan0     Recommend Wireless Extension v11 or later,
          Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v12.
sh-2.05b#  iwconfig wlan0

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 has been compiled with version 12 of Wireless Extension, while this program is using version 15. Some things may be broken... 
wlan0     IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"test"  
          Mode:Master  Frequency:2.422GHz  Access Point: 00:05:5D:5B:A8:5A  
          Bit Rate:2Mb/s   Tx-Power:4 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3  
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          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

When logged in as root, though, I get the following:

sh-2.05b# iwconfig wlan0 essid foo
Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :

    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not permitted.

Just in case it was a version problem I also compiled wireless-tools but it still gives:

sh-2.05b# ./iwconfig -v
iwconfig Version 25 

          Compatible with Wireless Extension v15 or earlier,
          Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v12.

wlan0     Recommend Wireless Extension v11 or later,
          Currently compiled with Wireless Extension v12.
sh-2.05b# ./iwconfig wlan0 essid foo
Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :

    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not permitted.

So, does anyone have any idea as to why the operation is not permitted (i am root at the time)?

Thanks 

-- 
Sam

Many modern computer languages aspire to be minimalistic. They either
succeed in being minimalistic, in which case they're relatively useless,
or they don't succeed in being truly minimalistic, in which case you can
actually solve real problems with them.  --Larry Wall
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4.