# iwlist says "Interface doesn't support scanning" [SOLVED]

## siphonzero

Hello all, this is my first post here (actually my first post anywhere with a Gentoo box   :Wink:  )

I've been enjoying Gentoo for a few days now and after some tinkering I have wifi working on my laptop using wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd. After getting wifi working with wpa_supplicant, I did the following:

1) emerge wicd

2) remove all net.* initscripts from all runlevels

3) add rc_hotplug="!net.enp2s8  !net.wlan0" to rc.conf

4) add /etc/init.d/wicd to default runlevel

But when I boot wicd won't work and I have to connect with dhcpcd manually. I can scan using iw, but I can't scan using iwlist or find any networks in wicd. Also, none of the "${wireless_*}" variables work in my conky. I'm glad I can connect but I'm confused as to why things are working this way. Any clarification on this is greatly appreciated. Let me know what additional output you want to see.

```

siphonzero # lspci | grep Network

10:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

```

```

siphonzero # lsmod

Module                  Size  Used by

b43                   123414  0 

```

```

siphonzero # ifconfig

enp2s8: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet6 fe80::9060:6feb:85b0:149f  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>

        ether 00:1b:38:f6:45:4f  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)

        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)

        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0

        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)

        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536

        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0

        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>

        loop  txqueuelen 0  (Local Loopback)

        RX packets 28  bytes 2044 (1.9 KiB)

        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0

        TX packets 28  bytes 2044 (1.9 KiB)

        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet 192.168.0.8  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.0.255

        inet6 fe80::6347:b885:3039:6259  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>

        ether 00:1a:73:cc:ef:50  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)

        RX packets 3118  bytes 1470315 (1.4 MiB)

        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0

        TX packets 2219  bytes 348032 (339.8 KiB)

        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

```

```

siphonzero # iwconfig wlan0

wlan0     no wireless extensions.

```

```

siphonzero # iwlist wlan0 scan

wlan0     Interface doesn't support scanning.

```

```

siphonzero # rc-status

Runlevel: default

 metalog                                                           [  started  ]

 dcron                                                              [  started  ]

 wicd                                                               [  started  ]

 netmount                                                        [  started  ]

 sshd                                                              [  started  ]

 local                                                             [  started  ]

Dynamic Runlevel: hotplugged

Dynamic Runlevel: needed

 dbus                                                              [  started  ]

Dynamic Runlevel: manual

```

```

siphonzero # equery uses conky

[ Legend : U - final flag setting for installation]

[        : I - package is installed with flag     ]

[ Colors : set, unset                             ]

 * Found these USE flags for app-admin/conky-1.9.0-r3:

 U I

 + + X             : Add support for X11

 - - apcupsd       : enable support for sys-power/apcupsd

 - - audacious     : enable monitoring of music played by media-sound/audacious

 - - curl          : Add support for client-side URL transfer library

 - - debug         : Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see

                     https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces

 - - eve           : enable support for the eve-online skill monitor

 - - hddtemp       : Enable monitoring of hdd temperature (app-admin/hddtemp)

 + + imlib         : Add support for imlib, an image loading and rendering library

 - - iostats       : enable support for per-task I/O statistics

 + + lua           : enable if you want Lua scripting support

 + + lua-cairo     : enable if you want Lua Cairo bindings for Conky (also enables lua support)

 + + lua-imlib     : enable if you want Lua Imlib2 bindings for Conky (also enables lua and imlib support)

 + + math          : enable support for glibc's libm math library

 - - moc           : enable monitoring of music played by media-sound/moc

 - - mpd           : enable monitoring of music controlled by media-sound/mpd

 - - nano-syntax   : enable syntax highlighting for app-editors/nano

 + + ncurses       : Add ncurses support (console display library)

 - - nvidia        : enable reading of nvidia card temperature sensors via media-video/nvidia-settings

 + + portmon       : enable support for tcp (ip4) port monitoring

 - - rss           : Enable support for RSS feeds

 - - thinkpad      : enable support for IBM/Lenovo notebooks

 + + truetype      : Add support for FreeType and/or FreeType2 fonts

 - - vim-syntax    : Pulls in related vim syntax scripts

 - - weather-metar : enable support for metar weather service

 - - weather-xoap  : enable support for metar and xoap weather service

 + + wifi          : Enable wireless network functions

 - - xmms2         : enable monitoring of music played by media-sound/xmms2

```

Last edited by siphonzero on Sat Jun 06, 2015 8:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Roman_Gruber

Only thing that comes to my mind is that the binary "blob" for the wifi device is outdated / does not work well with your kernel.

Have you checked if any other linux distro has the same issue with your wifi card? (known issues)

when money is not an issue swap out the wifi card when its unfixable.

some cards can utilize the windows binary blob ... also worth a try.

use another version of the wifi tools and see if its there.

boot from a livecd and see if the problem is there too.

influence of systemd / openrc / eudev / ... anything else?

just my ideas / thoughts,

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## charles17

 *siphonzero wrote:*   

> But when I boot wicd won't work and I have to connect with dhcpcd manually. I can scan using iw, but I can't scan using iwlist or find any networks in wicd. 

 

See https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wicd#Wicd_is_not_able_to_scan_for_Wireless_Networks_while_using_the_new_nl80211_Interface and https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wifi#WEXT.

But, why at all are you using wireless-tools instead of wpa_supplicant?

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## siphonzero

Thank you both for your replies, after reconfiguring my kernel a couple times I managed to fix the problem. I built "cfg80211" and "mac80211" as modules instead of building them straight into the kernel and now things seem to be working   :Laughing: . 

@charles17: I only installed wireless-tools out of frustration and curiosity, I've actually had a lot of trouble with this wlan card with every distro i've tried.

Anyway, I'm confused as to why it works when those two things are built as modules, but not when their built-in? For now though I can mark this as solved, thanks again for the input!

----------

