[SOLVED] "Sorry, that didn't work. Please try again."

Question

Hi,
I installed arch 3 days ago based on the wiki's Beginner's Guide and Whitson Gordon's excellent (if slightly outdated) install guide over at lifehacker. First of all, I would just like to say that overall, my experience with this distribution has been positive. I love the principles behind arch, I love the emphasis on end-user education and participation. But while the documentation here is very helpful for the most part, I have been unable to do one thing: connect to wireless networks.
My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1545, with the Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01) wireless card. Having used several different flavors of Debian in the past, I am well aware of the hoops that need to be jumped through to get Broadcom chips up and running. This part was actually pretty easy with the AUR and pacman.
I downloaded the b43-firmware package from (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=21690) here, built and installed it smoothly. I'm using NetworkManager in the GNOME desktop, and I can see all of the nearby wireless networks from the icon's interface. I read NetworkManager's (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ne … figuration) wiki entry and carefully followed the configuration instructions.
However, when I try to connect to my home network, upon entering my password, I get the message "Sorry, that didn't work. Please try again." and I'm returned to my desktop (yes, it's the correct password; I typed it out in an open terminal window and copied and pasted, just to be absolutely sure).
I tried taking my laptop to a friend's house and connecting to her network, (she's running Ubuntu, if by some bizarre chance that at all matters in any way) and got the same problem. Both networks are WPA encrypted, and, thinking that that was where the problem was, read and followed directions from the wiki entries for (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/WPA_supplicant) WPA-supplicant, double-checked the (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless) Broadcom Wireless page to see if I missed any related details, and re-read the entire (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network) Configuring Network page looking for a solution.
I have read numerous threads in this forum, googled through related threads in the forums of other distributions as well, but I simply cannot find a solution that will let me work this out.
I'm asking for help here from any other Broadcom WPA users who have had and solved this same problem, and also from any experienced archer who can maybe spot something stupid I've done going through the installation and set-up process.
If there is any step of my setup that needs clarifying, or if there is any output I can drop here to shed light on the situation, please reply or send me an email. If there is any documentation that you think I might have missed, you could just post that here as well. I just want very much to get to the bottom of this problem.
thanks very much arch community,
-Clay
Mod edit: I broke the text up for you to make it better readable. It will be really tl;dr otherwise.
Last edited by clay.reynolds (2011-10-27 21:49:59)

Answer 1

clay.reynolds wrote:Well, any sense of accomplisment or technical fluency I felt when I completed the arch installation is shot now.
I'm just an idiot, thank you for demonstrating that, Strike0. Root password dismissed the networking settings permissions prompt that I had confused for the router's security prompt, wireless is working fine now.
Also, thanks for that formatting help, bernarcher. I'll try to keep my posts better organized in the future. :]
I just thought id mention that something like this happens to all of us at one point- dont feel bad
Got stick with it and learn what you can..