Re: GNOME fails to recognize WLAN interface

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2009-03-20 at 08:11 -0700, PradeepGurumath wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We are trying to interface our WLAN driver with GNOME on an OMAP board.
> 
> Description of problem:
> The WLAN driver works without problem when we run it from the command line
> interface.
> Even IFCONFIG command confirms that WLAN interface is alive and kicking
> (WLAN gets listed along with eth0 and LO interface).
> 
> However, GNOME-Networkmanager doesn't recognize WLAN interface and thus
> doesn't show a list of available wireless networks to choose from.
> But, eth0 interface gets listed by the GNOME-NetworkManager.
> 
> Here are a few of the checks that we have done
> 
> Here is the result of "lshal | grep net"
>     udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_08_00_28_01_24_6d'
>       info.capabilities = {'net', 'net.80203'} (string list)
>       info.category = 'net.80203'  (string)
>       info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_08_00_28_01_24_6d' 
> (string)
>       linux.subsystem = 'net'  (string)
>       linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/class/net/eth0'  (string)
>       net.80203.mac_address = 8796764185709  (0x8002801246d)  (uint64)
>       net.address = '08:00:28:01:24:6d'  (string)
>       net.arp_proto_hw_id = 1  (0x1)  (int)
>       net.interface = 'eth0'  (string)
>       net.linux.ifindex = 2  (0x2)  (int)
>       net.originating_device =
> '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_smc91x'  (string)
>       net.physical_device = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_smc91x' 
> (string
> 
> This implies that HAL does not recognize our WLAN interface.

What version of HAL are you using?  Looks like the driver is not
implementing the right Linux Wireless Extensions bits.

> And, here is what "/sys/class/net# tree" has to say,
> /sys/class/net
>    .
>    |-eth0
>    |---power
>    |---statistics
>    |-irda0
>    |---power
>    |---statistics
>    |-lo
>    |---power
>    |---statistics
>    |-tiwlan0
>    |---power
>    |---statistics
>    |---wireless

Can you grab the output of "ls -al /sys/class/net/tiwlan0/device" for me
as well?  If the driver does not properly link to it's parent SDIO
subsystem device, you won't get a device link, and that's also wrong.
I'm pretty sure the SDIO subsystem does the correct linkage.  If you're
not using the in-kernel SDIO subsystem, well, then that's also wrong :)

For example, on my system:

[dcbw localhost ~]$ ls -al /sys/class/net/eth2/device
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2009-03-23 08:32 /sys/class/net/eth2/device -> ../../../0000:02:02.0
[dcbw localhost ~]$ 

> Our questions,
> 1. Are we missing something in the WLAN driver (e.g. entry in some device
> related structure etc.) or the problem lies somewhere else?

Current HAL requires the driver to implement the SIOCGIWNAME WEXT
function, which the driver should be doing anyway if it's compliant with
Linux Wireless Extensions.  The driver should *always* return '0' from
that handler, and fill the returned string appropriately, it is a
wireless device.

Earlier HAL versions used other methods to detect wifi devices, let me
know what version of HAL you're using and I can probably tell you what
the driver is missing.

> 2. Are there any configurations that are needed to make HAL aware of WLAN
> interface?

No, it's only driver issues that are preventing it from showing up.

dan