Re: Wireless interface stopped working in Etch
On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 20:46:11 +0000, Chris Lale wrote:
> Florian Kulzer wrote:
> >On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 16:38:50 +0000, Chris Lale wrote:
> >
> >>My Edimax EW-7108pcg PCMCIA wifi card (rt2500 driver) works perfectly in
> >>my constantly upgraded version of Etch (Testing). I installed the rt2500
> >>driver some weeks ago. The same driver, built in the same way, will not
> >>work in a fresh install of Etch in a new partition on the same machine
> >>(Thinkpad T20).
> >>
> >>In both cases I built the rt2500 module from the rt2500-source package
> >>using module assistant. The resulting modules package was the same
> >>version:
> >>
> >>rt2500-modules-2.6.17-2-686 version 1.1.0+cvs20060620-3+2.6.17-9
[...]
> >>With the rt2500 module, the card is detected and the rt2500 module loads
> >>OK in both cases. The only difference that I can find between the two
> >>systems is that the name allocated to the wireless interface is
> >>different. On the working system, the command iwconfig gives wlan0 for
> >>the wireless interface:
> >>
> >>lo no wireless extensions.
> >>eth0 no wireless extensions.
> >>irda0 no wireless extensions.
> >>wlan0 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:"essid-of-my-modem/router"
> >> [...]
> >>sit0 no wireless extensions.
> >>
> >>On the fresh install, the interface's name has been changed from wlan0
> >>to eth1. (Also, irda0 and sit0 are not detected):
> >>
> >>lo no wireless extensions.
> >>eth0 no wireless extensions.
> >>eth1 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:""
> >> [...]
[...]
> >>Does anyone know what might be causing the wireless interface to have
> >>different names on the fresh install of Etch? Any suggestions gratefully
> >>received.
> >>
> >
> >The usual suspect for issues with the names of network devices is
> >/etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules.
> >
> >As far as the general problem with the device is concerned: It seems
> >that eth1 in the new install is accepted as a wireless network device,
> >so it should work.
>
> I think you must be right - this is not the problem. I substituted wlan0
> for eth1 in /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules and rebooted
> (there must be a better way). iwconfig now reported wlan0. I also
> modified /etc/network/interfaces, substituting wlan0 for eth0, but the
> interface still would not work.
> >Did you adjust the data in /etc/network/interfaces to
> >match the new name of the device? Ifup needs this information to set the
> >ESSID, encryption key, etc.
>
> Yes, this all looks OK:
>
> iface wlan0 inet static
> address 192.168.1.3
> netmask 255.255.255.0
> gateway 192.168.1.1
> wireless-essid solarsystem
> wireless-key 0123456789
>
> It seems that the kernel modules are different. lsmod reports what looks
> like a difference in size:
>
> original system:
> rt2500 149988 1
>
> fresh install:
> rt2500 151748 1
>
> Is it possible to copy the module over from the original system to the
> new system? Which files are involved?
The file should be called "rt2500.ko" and it will be somewhere in
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/net/ or thereabouts. If you
run "dpkg-deb --contents" on the .deb file that you generated with
module-assistant you will get a listing of all file locations.
I am not sure if the other kernel will let you load the module since the
version magic string will probably not match.
(see "/sbin/modinfo rt2500 | grep vermagic")
I would first poke at a few other things:
dmesg | egrep 'wlan0|rt2500'
Are you able to set ESSID and key with "iwconfig" directly? Does the
card associate with the access point? Can you detect the beacon of the
AP with "iwlist wlan0 scan"? Any error messages?
It could also be that you are missing some other modules, e.g. some
parts of the ieee80211 stack. You could try if the driver works with
WEP/WPA disabled at the AP. Diff'ing the output of "lsmod" and the
kernel configuration for both cases might be helpful, too.
--
Regards,
Florian
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