Re: Wireless interface fails to initialize fully; still need to get DHCP manually
Mark Fletcher wrote:
> I had exactly the same problem -- with different hardware.
> The cause was that PCMCIA services are started in the boot
> / startup sequence AFTER networking is set up, so at the
> time the startup procedure is trying to connect to your
> network PCMCIA services are not running.
>
> By the time the boot has completed, PCMCIA services are
> started, so now an attempt to connect to the network
> works.
>
> Solution is, check your /etc/rcS.d directory and your
> /etc/rcX.d where X is the runlevel the machine boots to by
> default, and find the SXXpcmcia link which will point to
> something in /etc/init.d. Files in here beginning with S
> are executed in order at startup, first the content of
> rcS.d then the target runlevel. So, as root, change the XX
> number between S and pcmcia to something less than the
> number attached to the startup script for your networking.
> Then PCMCIA services should get started first and be
> available when the networking attempts to initialise.
>
Thanks for your comments, Mark. I don't see any SXXpcmcia
in MY /etc/rcS.d/ in Xandros but I don't have any pcmcia
devices in my machine anyway and that bus isn't
initialized. The person (Bob) on whose behalf I'm
inquiring here of course does have such a device, i.e. the
Buffalo wireless card in question.
However, in my Xandros setup, in /etc/rc5.d/ there is a link
S20pcmcia pointing to /etc/init.d/pcmcia (Bob is using the
same version of Xandros as I do). Also, in /etc/rcS.d/
there is a link "S40networking" pointing to the startup
script "networking" in /etc/init.d.
So it looks as though in Xandros startup of the PCMCIA
services precedes that of the networking services. That
would also jive with the experience of many Xandros 3 users
who have their PCMCIA wireless networking cards work out of
the box in Xandros.
FWIW, I should also mention that Bob runs his card with a
Windows driver via ndiswrapper,
and there is a link /etc/rcS.d/20module-init-tools that
starts up the ndiswrapper kernel module at that early
stage.
> Other thing I notice is your /etc/interfaces file doesn't
> seem (unless I'm being blind) to "auto" your wireless
> interface. The boot sequence will only attempt to
> initialise interfaces that have the auto keyword defined
> in /etc/interfaces (it does ifup -a which starts those
> interfaces with an auto keyword). cf your loopback lo
> interface in your interfaces file quoted above.
>
You appear to be responding to the /etc/network/interfaces
file that Tim Beauregard posted. Bob's looks like this:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
OR
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.11.8
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.11.1
dns-nameserver 192.168.11.1
In the second one, first we tried just address and netmask,
then added gateway, then added dns-... None of these
worked.
I think Bob's problem boils down to something simple.
Practically all the networking parameters seem to be
correctly set. The only thing he has to do after bootup to
get a wireless connection is to manually run either "ifup
eth1" or "dhclient eth1".
Those are exactly the symptoms one would encounter if the
"auto eth1" directive were missing
in /etc/network/interfaces. But it's there!
The other possibility is that Xandros doesn't recognize the
device name eth1. Bob had gone back and forth between
running ndiswrapper v.1.2 (in the presence of which Xandros
calls the wireless interface eth1) and v.1.8 (in which case
Xandros calls it wlan0). I think Xandros may have done
some aliasing wlan0=eth1 which may have gotten scrambled
but I don't know in which config file this might be found.
Does this make any sense, i.e. Xandros possibly mixing up
interface names?
Robert
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