Re: no wireless connection at boot to Cisco AP

[Bill Moss <bmoss CLEMSON EDU>]

I think there are two separate bugs though they may be related. The one 
I submitted to the hal component of bugzilla had to do with the freezing 
of the value of net.80203.link as reported by the hal-device-manager. I 
just repeated part of the experiment to look at the /sys/.../carrier 
file. Yes, I am using a 2.6.10 kernel.

IBM T42
FC3 kernel-2.6.10-1.741
hal 0.4.7.1
dbus 0.22-10
e1000 driver for Intel Corp. 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet Controller
ipw2200-0.21 driver for Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG
setup: network service turned off, eth0 onboot=no (wired) eth1 onboot=no 
(wireless)
NM = NetworkManager-CVS-1-26-05

hal-device-manager reports values for the key net.80203.link for the 
Intel Corp. 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet Controller

NM service on, NMInfo on or off (NM brings up eth0 and eth1 at boot)
plug in wire, boot
hal-device-manager: net.80203.link value = 1
cat /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier -> 1
unplug wire: hal-device-manager: net.80203.link value = 1
cat /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier -> 0
plug in wire: hal-device-manager: net.80203.link value = 1
cat /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier -> 1
unplug wire: hal-device-manager: net.80203.link value = 1
cat /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier -> 0

The carrier file changes but the net.80203.link value does not.
______________________________________________
The second bug has to do with booting with no wire plugged in. NM 
connects to an SMC AP at boot but cannot connect to a Cisco AP at boot. 
In the Cisco case, I give NM a minute to make a wireless connection, 
plug in a wire, get a wired connection, unplug the wire, and get a 
wireless connection. Plugging in the wire and then unplugging it, is 
giving NM a kick and making it work. I do to see any strange behavior 
with hal with respect to this second bug but I may not be looking in the 
right place. There is a chance that the ipw2200-0.21 wireless driver is 
involved in this bug but no firmware restarts are being reported in 
syslog. This version of the driver has been very stable and has produced 
no firmware errors since I installed it.

--
Bill Moss
Professor, Mathematical Sciences
Clemson University