DWL650+ **on-boot** startup

[joeclark]

I have a DWL650+ wireless card, controlled by driver acx100_pci, with Mandrake 10. When the system boots, the interface (eth1) is configured with wireless parameters and IP address, but I am never able to ping the wireless router initially.

 

After startup completes and I login as root, I've tried the following:

 

/etc/init.d/network restart

 

and

 

ifdown eth1; ifup eth1

 

Neither of these "connects" the card reliably. The only reliable way to make the card work (has worked every time) is to do the following:

 

ifconfig eth1 down; ifconfig eth1 up; ifconfig eth1 ipaddr

 

From then on, the card works fine. I would like to figure out WHAT ifconfig down/up does that even ifup/ifdown do not do, and why the card does not initialize appropriately on startup.

 

Any clues?

 

PS: If Mandrake hadn't messed up my partition table (making Windows unbootable), maybe I wouldn't mind this bug, but if Linux is going to be my only available installation for awhile, I'd like to have it work *right*.

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Can you post the contents of /etc/pcmcia/config, /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia, and /etc/modules.conf (if you are using a 2.4 kernel), and/or /etc/modprobe.conf (if you are using a 2.6 kernel)?

[joeclark]

/etc/pcmcia/config

-> this file is way long (2336 lines)...I've attached it below.

 

/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia:

PCIC=yenta_socket

PCMCIA=yes

 

/etc/modprobe.conf (I'm using kernel 2.6.3):

alias eth0 via-rhine

alias sound-slot-0 snd-via82xx

options acx100_pci use_eth_name=1 firmware_dir=/lib/modules/acx100_fmwe

install scsi_hostadapter /sbin/modprobe imm; /sbin/modprobe ppa; /bin/true

install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-via82xx && { /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss; /bin/true; }

install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe usb-uhci; /bin/true

remove snd-via82xx { /sbin/modprobe -r snd-pcm-oss; } ; /sbin/modprobe -r --first-time --ignore-remove snd-via82xx

 

I'm not sure whether the firmware option was necessary or not...I did a couple things to the configuration to get it to work to start with, but I was un-smart and didn't write down the exact steps and changes.

 

Thanks for your help.

config

Edited April 9, 2004 by joeclark

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Try adding

 

alias eth1 acx100_pci

 

to /etc/modprobe.conf. I'm sorry, but I can't remember if it should go before or after the options part (I think after). You'll have to reboot, of course, to see if it works. Try after the options first and then before.

[joeclark]

**Update**

 

I think I figured out some things... in my ifcfg-eth1 file, I had parameters like WIRELESS_PARAM. These are used in ifup to set the iwconfig properties. However, ifup-wireless uses different values of just PARAM without the wireless. I think that ifup-wireless is careful to set the essid last, whereas ifup is not. So..I think the magic is in using the right set of variables....by the way...why are there two sets? If ifup-wireless sets stuff, why does ifup also set stuff? Oh, and why is "NICKNAME" set to hostname? Wouldn't it be better to allow the user to set that in ifcfg-eth1 too?

 

Another thing: it seems that at the very end of ifup-wireless I have to add at the end a sleep for at least 1 second, followed by an ifconfig down/up sequence. Only then will the card initialize itself properly so that I can ping the router. Any ideas why that is? There was a reference online somewhere that said this was necessary (and I saw that it wouldn't work without it).

 

Finally, on startup, the "[OK]" list shows that eth1 failed to load, but when I finally get to a console that i can try it, it seems that it DOES work now. Also, if I run network restart manually, it takes appx 5 seconds to run (with the delays I guess), but at bootup it takes almost no time. Is the startup sequence not waiting for a valid response from the network script before it goes on and so assumes it failed?

 

Note: Wouldn't it be easier if there were an ifcfg-sample that included all the options a typical user might want to add in. One extra file might make a lot of people not waste so much time. And while I'm at it, having sample commented-out lines in /etc/exports and /etc/sysconfig/static-routes (and probably lots of other places) would be nice too. All three of these files have now annoyed me because they don't provide samples.