FC5, wireless, NetworkManager--a discovery

[Matthew Saltzman <mjs ces clemson edu>]

I've seen some discussion on fedora-list and networkmanager-list related to 
issues with wireless and NM in FC5, and I have an experience to relate that I 
think might be worth investigating.  My wireless and NM have been much more 
stable after acting on it.  This is a bit long, so bear with me.

I installed FC5 on my Thinkpad T41 with e1000 wired and ipw2200 wireless. On 
first install, the e1000 was assigned to eth0 and the ipw2200 was assigned to 
eth1.  That assignment was indicated in /etc/sysconfig/hwconf and there were 
appropriate aliases in /etc/modprobe.conf.  Also, system-config-network showed 
that both cards were correctly detected and assigned to device names as above. 
There was an interface created for eth0 (the e1000) but none for eth1.  I 
created a wireless interface for eth1, started NM, and everything seemed to 
work.  I also added netowrk mointor applets to my taskbar for both interfaces.

After then next boot, I noticed that the wireless interface was now attached to 
eth0 and the wired one to eth1 (the signal strength graphic in the network 
monitor moved to the other one).  None of the config files had changed--hwconf, 
modprobe.conf, and sys-config-net all showed wireless on eth1, but ifconfig and 
iwconfig showed that the wireless was eth0 and the wired was eth1.  NM seemed 
to work, but its behavior was somewhat flakey. in particular, it would often 
have trouble resuming after suspend if I had changed networks.  Occasionally, 
the ipw2200 driver would launch into an infinite loop.

Rebooting seemed to assign the network devices arbitrarily.  Sometimes wireless 
was on eth1 and sometimes it was on eth0.

So here's what I did (a solution I happened on a few months back when I was 
thinking about forcing the assignment of NICs to devices for other reasons).

Check /etc/sysconfig/hwconf for the original assignnment.  In my case, that was 
e1000 to eth0 and ipw2200 to eth1.  Add the following lines (aliases as 
appropriate for your drivers):

    alias eth0 e1000
    alias eth1 ipw2200
    install ipw2200 /sbin/modprobe -q eth0; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install 
ipw2200

The last line has the effect of forcing the eth0 module to load before the 
ipw2200 module.  Thus the ipw2200 module is always eth1.

Now if you use sys-config-net, delete all interfaces and devices and reboot. 
The devices will be redetected and should get their proper assignments.  NM 
should continue to just work.

After doing this, I have had none of the bizzare problems with wireless or NM. 
I've heard that this inconsistent device detection problem is a known issue 
with the FC5 kernels, but I haven't had a chance to look at Bugzilla.  Anyway, 
if you are having wireless issues, give it a shot and let us know if it helps.

--
		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs