XO Troubleshooting Network

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

english | español

HowTo [ID# 147075]  +/-

This is the portion of the XO Troubleshooting Guide for diagnosing problems with the network connection of an XO laptop.

Software Tools

XO Self-test

A Hardware Self-Test is included in the XO laptop. It includes a test of the networking hardware, where it communicates with the networking interface and prints out a list of the access points (SSIDs) seen in a scan of the local networks.

Sugar Tools

Sugar indicates the state of the network in a number of different ways. The user interface of Sugar is changing, in particular with respect to indication of network status, in an upcoming (9/08) release, 8.2

Hovering the pointer over the network icon (circle) in Home Screen provides information about what network the laptop is currently connected to. The absence of a network icon (circle) in the Home Screen may indicate a problem with the networking hardware, but is also frequently associated with software bugs.

The neighborhood view should show a circle for each WiFi (802.11b/g) access point in range, plus three more for the built-in mesh channels. Hover over a circle to see the SSID (name) of the access point or the number of a mesh channel.

Linux Tools

Need links for these tools, accessible using the Terminal activity (or vtty on most laptops):

• lsusb
• iwconfig
• ifconfig

Other Debugging Guides

• An introduction to using the XO with WiFi access points
• The WiFi Troubleshooting Guide