Re: Multiple Wireless Interfaces

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 16:36 -0600, Harrison Metzger wrote:
> Dan,
> 
> Thanks for your reply. In Fedora/sugar the mesh and wireless work
> fine. I forgot to mention that I have installed Debian and am using
> that. In general, if a computer has 2 wireless adaptors, is there a
> way to tell nm which one to use. (Or if not, in Linux, how can an
> adaptor be disabled so nm won't attempt to use it?) 

Depends which version of NetworkManager you're using.  The version
distributed with the OLPC images is modified to recognize and treat the
mesh device specially.  However with stock NM, the mesh device looks
like a normal Wifi device even though it doesn't _act_ like a normal
wifi device.  You won't really be able to do mesh stuff with NM without
the OLPC version of NetworkManager, which is available in gnome.org
subversion.

The modifications to NM for OLPC are not suitable for reintegration back
into NM stable, and should be reimplemented from scratch for NM 0.7 when
multiple device support lands.

NM 0.6.x does not support multiple active devices, and the OLPC
modifications were basically a one-off to make the mesh device work
concurrently with the wifi device, which was possible because the mesh
device is sufficiently simpler than a traditional wifi device.

Many distros have the ability to make NM ignore a device; you'll have to
figure out what Debian's method is.  In Fedora and SUSE, you add the
NM_CONTROLLED=no line to your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-msh0
file.  The Debian way might be to add the interface
to /etc/network/interfaces or something.

Dan

> Harrison Metzger
> 
> On Jan 7, 2008 12:39 PM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
>         On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 11:04 -0600, Harrison Metzger wrote:
>         > Hello,
>         >
>         > I purchased the XO (OLPC $100 laptop) through the give one
>         get one
>         > program. It has 2 wireless interfaces, msh0 for mesh
>         networking, and 
>         > eth0 the normal wireless interface. When I start network
>         manager, it
>         > only uses msh0 as the wireless adaptor, and therefore, I see
>         no
>         > networks. Is there a way to explicitly tell network manager
>         which 
>         > wireless network interface to use.
>         
>         
>         You can click the appropriate circle in the Mesh View, either
>         click an
>         existing AP, or click a circle for Mesh 1/6/11.
>          NetworkManager will, by
>         default, look through all mesh channels first for a school
>         server, after 
>         which it will fall back to an AP you've previously connected
>         to.  If
>         none of those are found, it will try an XO-as-Mesh-Portal on
>         each mesh
>         channel, then finally fall back to Mesh Channel 1 in a
>         peer-to-peer mesh 
>         situation.
>         
>         You should definitely see wireless access points in Mesh View
>         though
>         after it's booted up.
>         
>         What build # are you running, and can you report the output
>         of, from a
>         root terminal, '/sbin/iwlist eth0 scan' ? 
>         
>         Dan
>         
>         > Below is the output of nm-tool:
>         >
>         > NetworkManager Tool
>         >
>         > State: disconnected
>         >
>         > - Device: msh0
>         >
>         ---------------------------------------------------------------- 
>         >   NM Path:
>           /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/msh0
>         >   Type:              802.11 Wireless
>         >   Driver:            usb
>         >   Active:            no
>         >   HW Address:        00:17:C4:11:03:EA 
>         >
>         >   Capabilities:
>         >     Supported:       yes
>         >     Speed:           11 Mb/s
>         >
>         >   Wireless Settings
>         >     Scanning:        yes
>         >     WEP Encryption:  yes
>         >     WPA Encryption:  yes 
>         >     WPA2 Encryption: yes
>         >
>         >   Wireless Networks (* = Current Network)
>         >
>         > If network manager can't choose between wireless adaptors,
>         is there a
>         > wat to disable an interface so network manager can't choose
>         it. 
>         >
>         > Harrison Metzger
>         
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>         
>