ubuntuwirelessifconfigiwconfig

iwconfig - /proc/net/wireless does not exist

I am trying to use iwconfig to get info about wlan0. When I try I get:

wlan0     no wireless extensions.

ifconfig seems to printout normally (includes an ip address for the connection). The machine appears to have Wireless Extensions v22 installed, but iwconfig --version says:

iwconfig  Wireless-Tools version 30
      Compatible with Wireless Extension v11 to v22.

Cannot read /proc/net/wireless

Upon further inspection, /proc/net/wireless does not exist but /proc/net/dev does. I can't figure out why iwconfig does not work and/or doesn't create the file. The connection exists and I am able to get on the internet with the machine.

Solution

  • I fixed the problem.

    I rebuilt my kernel. Before rebuilding I called make menuconfig to manually set kernel parameters. I told it to include cfg80211 wireless extensions compatibility under the Networking support - Wireless menu. After installing the new image it worked perfectly.