Bug#488267: Should add hostap modules

[Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>]

On Sunday 29 June 2008, Frans Pop wrote:
> IMO this is clearly a udev problem and adding the hostap modules to D-I
> is NOT going to solve that, but is only going to make things worse.

Looking at udev, a similar issue has already been identified for the 
atheros driver which also has two interfaces: ath0 and wifi0.

For that some special casing has been done in the NIC renaming rules by 
adding a check on ATTRS{type}=1. And the general rule seems to be that 
wifiX interfaces should be excluded from the renaming.

In fact, that exception also covers wlan interfaces, so will probably also 
cover hostap (provided that ATTRS{type} has similar values).

So the rule should not be:
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:d0:59:bd:d5:c5", NAME="eth1"
but:
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:d0:59:bd:d5:c5", ATTRS{type}=1, NAME="eth1"

The problem here seems to be that during installation the orinoco driver 
does not use wlanX, but probably just ethX or something, so when the 
rename rule is written that extra ATTRS{type}=1 check is not added. And 
the z25 script also does not contain a general "skip any wifiX" rule.

So my conclusion is still that this is essentially a udev issue. IMO it 
needs a more structural exception for wifiX interfaces.

The workaround is still, as I wrote earlier, to remove the existing rename 
rule for the wifi interface in the z25 script and to let udev regenerate 
it.


Barry: a few requests.
1) What was the wireless interface called in the installer?
   You can probably tell from /var/log/installer/syslog.
2) Does the workaround described above work?
3) Could you please provide the output of
   $ udevinfo -a -p /sys/class/net/<interface>
   where <interface> is both of the interfaces you have in that directory
   for your wireless.

Cheers,
FJP