Re: CVS (STABLE_0_3) works for Madwifi/Atheros, but starts too late

[Derek Atkins <warlord MIT EDU>]

Quoting Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>:

> On Thu, 2005-05-12 at 12:34 -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> > Any chance you could tag a 0.3.5 release and push an update out to FC3? 
> (Not
> > that it matters to me; I built my own from the CVS code, but others might
> want
> > it).
> 
> Yay :)  I'll check out stability on my FC3 laptop and investigate.

I did have a few issues with it today..  I was connected to a wireless network
and then suspended the machine (which tearsdown the wireless drivers).  When I
resumed (which reloads the wireless drivers) NM didn't notice and didn't try to
connect to my (different) wireless network.

Now, this COULD have been due to the fact that I didn't realize I forgot to
restart NMInfo, so it's POSSIBLE that that is part of the problem.  I'll be
able to test tonight when I get back to my hotel room and resume.  Looking at
the logs, however, it just resumed the DHCP and didn't notice that the AP had
gone away:

May 12 11:44:48 cliodev NetworkManager: Sending DHCP_REQUEST for 10.71.1.187 to
10.71.0.1
May 12 11:44:50 cliodev NetworkManager: DHCP: Starting request loop, overall
start_time = {1115912690s, 117098us}
May 12 11:44:49 cliodev ACPI: Waking up......
May 12 11:44:49 cliodev gpm[4375]: *** info [mice.c(1766)]:
May 12 11:44:50 cliodev NetworkManager: DHCP: Request sent, waiting for
reply...

Again, I'll try this again later tonight and get back to you (probably tomorrow)
with more info.

Another issue I had today was that I lost network for a short time.  NMInfo
still thought I was connected to the network, but I had no routes.  I've only
seen that one time today and have no idea how to reproduce it.

> > Nice work.  It's nice to have this all working now.  My only real comment: 
> It
> > would be nice to get NetworkManager (and hal, and dbus) all started much
> > earlier in the boot sequence.  As it is right now I've got a number of
> > boot-time services that fail to start because the network isn't there
> during
> > boot time.  In particular, ntpd fails to start properly without network
> (as
> > does mit-zephyr's zhm, but you probably don't care about that).
> 
> Yes, this is a tough nut to crack.  #1, dbus, hal, and NM are on /usr by
> default.  This means that they cannot start until /usr is mounted, which
> on Fedora Core is not until the 2nd quarter of the boot process.
> Otherwise, the boot process totally fails for people with network
> mounted /usr directories (ie, you need the network up before you can
> mount /usr, but NM is on /usr, so you're screwed).
> 
> Part of the problem with this is that NetworkManager uses glib, which
> means that if NM is in /bin, then glib has to be moved to /lib, etc.
> Since our init systems on Linux suck in general, this isn't really easy
> to fix without changing a lot of stuff.
> 
> If you like, you could modify the /etc/rc.d/init.d start scripts for NM,
> HAL, and dbus to start earlier, around the 6 - 8 range.  You'll see
> stuff like this:
> 
> # chkconfig: - 98 02
> 
> Change that to:
> 
> NetworkManager:# chkconfig: - 08 92
> haldaemon:# chkconfig: - 07 93
> messagebus:# chkconfig: - 06 94
> 
> Then run:
> /sbin/chkconfig --del messagebus
> /sbin/chkconfig --del haldaemon
> /sbin/chkconfig --del NetworkManager
> /sbin/chkconfig --add messagebus
> /sbin/chkconfig --add haldaemon
> /sbin/chkconfig --add NetworkManager
> /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 NetworkManager on
> 
> and reboot.  This deletes the startup links, recreates them at their new
> priorities, and reenables NetworkManager (which isn't set to start by
> default).

Thanks.  I'll try this.  Does NM store WEP key information in a way that doesn't
require NMInfo to run?  I.e., if I boot up in a location that requires a WEP
key (and that WEP key is already "known" to the system) will it boot up and
connect properly?  Or does the key require access to some information in the
logged-in user's homedir or something like that?

> Dan

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord MIT EDU                        PGP key available