Re: GNOME fails to recognize WLAN interface

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2009-03-24 at 03:41 -0700, PradeepGurumath wrote:
> Hi Dan,
> 
> Thanks a ton for the reply.
> We have structured our driver in such a way that hald now identifies our
> interface.
> 
> The answers for your questions
> HAL version : -   hal-0.5.9.1
>  
> After the driver changes, here is what 'ls -al /sys/class/net/wlan0/device/'
> lists.
> # 
> # ls -al /sys/class/net/wlan0/device/
>  drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root            0 Jan  1 00:01 .
> drwxr-xr-x   45 root     root            0 Jan  1 00:01 ..
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            0 Jan  1 00:01 bus ->
> ../../../bus/platform
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            0 Jan  1 00:01 driver ->
> ../../../bus/platform/drivers/SDIO_WLAN
> -r--r--r--    1 root     root         4096 Jan  1 00:05 modalias
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            0 Jan  1 00:05 net:wlan0 ->
> ../../../class/net/wlan0
> drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root            0 Jan  1 00:05 power
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            0 Jan  1 00:01 subsystem ->
> ../../../bus/platform
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root         4096 Jan  1 00:01 uevent
> 
> However, the 'lshal | grep net' does not show the mac address (shown as
> 00:00:00:00:00:00) unless we restart hald.

When does the driver determine the MAC address?  It shouldn't
necessarily be required, since recent drivers in 2.6.2x kernels
sometimes don't know the MAC until dev->open() anyway, but older hals
deal with this less intelligently.  In any case, it shouldn't require a
HAL restart to make things work, but you may not get the MAC address
shown in HAL unless the driver knows the MAC when it probes the card.

Most drivers can either load firmware and ask for the MAC at probe time,
or extract the MAC from the card's EEPROM during probe.  If you're only
loading firmware at dev->open() time, then maybe you could get a stub
firmware the only reads the MAC from EEPROM or card registers, and then
dump that firmware after it's read the MAC?

Dan

> Is this really required to restart hald every time we make our interface up?
> 
> If not, can you please suggest how we can avoid restarting hald?
> 
> thanks again,
> pradeep.
> 
> 
> 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.
> > 
> > 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
> > 
> > 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?
> > 2. Are there any configurations that are needed to make HAL aware of WLAN
> > interface?
> > 
> > Can somebody kindly throw some light on the missing link here?
> > 
> > thanks,
> > pradeep.
> > 
> > 
>