Best way to enable WLAN and LAN on laptop

[Guest ChillyWillie]

Hi,

 

I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop and its running 10.1 Official. I've configured the wireless card using the ndiswrapper module and my ethernet is also enabled by default (both use DHCP). The problem is, when I start up it will inevitably pause at either one or both of the LAN or WLAN configuration.

 

What's the easiest way to get my system up and running sooner without waiting for a DHCP request that isn't coming? I could remove the symbolic link to /etc/init.d/network from the /etc/rc5.d directory, but I don't really want to manually set up the LAN/WLAN after my system boots up. Is the fact that these devices are using DHCP slowing down the detection of no router? I can't change the LAN to use a static IP since it's not my router, but I can change the WLAN to use static addresses.

 

Any ideas?

[pmpatrick]

I found my wireless card both comes up faster and runs better with a static ip. YMMV.

 

Also, you can just edit your ifcfg-eth0 and/or ifcfg-wlan0 files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ by setting the ONBOOT field to "no". That will stop the dhcp request at boot. To bring the network up just open a console and run:

 

# ifup eth0

 

or

 

# ifup wlan0

 

No need to reconfigure anything.

 

You need to be root to execute the above. I don't want my wireless card to automatically come up so I set the config file to "no" and made a script which I can launch from and icon on my desktop to bring up the wireless network. I just click on the icon and am prompted for my root password. After entering it, the wireless network comes up.

[Qchem]

You may also be able to adjust the timeout for the dhcp lookup in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*

 

If the files aren't documented enough, try checking the man page for the dhcp client.