Wifi Problems

[tux]

 I spent the weekend re-installing. Two reasons for this:

1. Checking out the use of USB Lan Dongle for install
2. Checking out the use of CF Lan card for install

Both worked quite happily. If you are interested, I put a topic about the USB Dongle install in this forum.

(I also wanted to redo my install because I thought I'd made some wrong choices in packages and wanted a fresh start.)

However I ran across problems trying to use my wifi card after both the installs. At boot time the messages indicate that both hostap and the orinoco modules are being loaded. This results in rwo interfaces appearing when I ifconfig -a.   I am pretty poor at command line wifi configuration!  

The interfaces were wifi0 and wlan0. There are all sorts of error messages when I try and run the card. I thought this might be due to conflicts between hostap and orinoco. Those problems have been reported before and fixes suggested. I was about to restart with hostap blacklisted when I thought of trying something else.

I have dabbled with wifi-radar and was quite impressed. So I installed it and ran it from a terminal. Plenty of error messages as mentioned above, but then wifi-radar ran. I was able to configure a 'new' connection, but of course it would not connect. wifi-radar was asking for eth2. This is default for the app?  

So I edited /etc/wifi-radar.conf to replace eth2 with wifi0, didn't work, and then with wlan0. The wlan0 interface was recognised, configured and I am using it for apt-get update etc.

ifconfig -a shows that wlan0 is configured and assigned an ip.

I hope this information is helpful.

Now to the questions.

1. Will I be able to reboot and still operate like this? I'll  just have to check it out.
2. Is there any point in worrying about both hostap and orinoco being loaded at boot time?
3. If I let them both load, would that mean that a card which operated with hostap drivers would work without problem?
 


P.S. I ran into some peculiar problems during the installs. I don't know if this was because the install processes write to the install SD card and leave files there which might interfere with a later install.   But I blanked the SD card I use for these installs and put a fresh copy of the files on it. The install then worked and the working system had no major problems, apart from the wifi problems  

Cheers

[dlj0]

However I ran across problems trying to use my wifi card after both the installs. At boot time the messages indicate that both hostap and the orinoco modules are being loaded. This results in rwo interfaces appearing when I ifconfig -a.   I am pretty poor at command line wifi configuration!

It's not a big deal.  Look at the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.  Near the bottom are two references to hostap, and two more to orinoco.  They will be like
#blacklist orinoco_cs
#blacklist orinoco
#blacklist hostap
#blacklist hostap_cs

The #'s indicate that the line is disabled.  Remove the #'s from one set.  Try.  If yes, stop.  If no, switch which one is enabled.

1. Will I be able to reboot and still operate like this? I'll  just have to check it out.
2. Is there any point in worrying about both hostap and orinoco being loaded at boot time?
3. If I let them both load, would that mean that a card which operated with hostap drivers would work without problem?
 

I'd wonder how stable the connection would be with both enabled.  You have how many wifi cards that you are actually using, anyway?  If the answer is 1, then configure for that one.  If more than one, why?

[tux]

However I ran across problems trying to use my wifi card after both the installs. At boot time the messages indicate that both hostap and the orinoco modules are being loaded. This results in rwo interfaces appearing when I ifconfig -a.   I am pretty poor at command line wifi configuration!

It's not a big deal.  Look at the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.  Near the bottom are two references to hostap, and two more to orinoco.  They will be like
#blacklist orinoco_cs
#blacklist orinoco
#blacklist hostap
#blacklist hostap_cs

The #'s indicate that the line is disabled.  Remove the #'s from one set.  Try.  If yes, stop.  If no, switch which one is enabled.

1. Will I be able to reboot and still operate like this? I'll  just have to check it out.
2. Is there any point in worrying about both hostap and orinoco being loaded at boot time?
3. If I let them both load, would that mean that a card which operated with hostap drivers would work without problem?
 

I'd wonder how stable the connection would be with both enabled.  You have how many wifi cards that you are actually using, anyway?  If the answer is 1, then configure for that one.  If more than one, why?

 Thanks for the reply, the above contents for Blacklist and the suggestion is helpful.  

However I did the little trick with wifi-radar mentioned in my post and at the moment am able to use wifi regardless and the connection is stable.  

I have not used different wifi cards! I set up this system using my CF lan card for the initial network connection. When I plugged in my Zonet card two interfaces appeared, wifi0 and wlan0, plus messages about both hostap and orinoco being loaded. Attempts to use the wifi card produced all sorts of error messages. I was about to do the blacklist bit, as you suggest above, but tried using wifi-radar and editing its conf file to use the wifi0 or wlan0 interface.  

Wifi-radar works with the wlan0 interface.  

I will do the blacklist thing and report back on which settings work and any significant messages that appear.  

Cheers

[tux]

 Hi again,

just found time to put the lines you quoted into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. (Would it work just as well if I made a blacklist-eth file?)  

#blacklist orinoco_cs
#blacklist orinoco
#blacklist hostap
#blacklist hostap_cs

I uncommented the hostap lines and rebooted. The messages said, this time, that eth0 was configured and that it was renamed to wlan0. It also said that the device was an intersil prism. This is what my cards get recognised as, under Sharp and Cacko and other Sharp based roms.

I blobbed in editing the blacklist file, I put - instead of _.   Didn't seem to care. However I went back in and corrected myself and rebooted. Same messages.  

One strange thing, completely unrelated to wifi: every now and then, after a reboot, the gui login screen has X Window for its label.  I just restart the gui system and it comes back to Welcome to debian.  Any ideas?  

Because my AP has wep, I'd need to set up the connection by putting a manually edited file into place. As I said before, I'm not too clever with ifconfig commands, so I'll stick to using wifi-radar. It lets me type in the interface details easily. It should also be much easier to use it to scan for APs and set up connections. So I'll stick to that.

  What is strange is that this wifi problem doesn't always happen. Installs using wifi to begin with, sometimes have the problem after install and sometimes don't. The installs I've done using USB Lan dongles and CF Lan cards always do!  

Cheers and thanks again.

[tux]

  Coming back to the issue of putting the following lines into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

#blacklist orinoco_cs
#blacklist orinoco
#blacklist hostap
#blacklist hostap_cs


Yesterday I blacklisted the hostap modules by removing the #s. As I said this gave me a wlan0 interface and it was fine in use. It then occurred to me to reverse what I did.     So I blacklisted the orinoco modules instead.

When I restarted, I got no error messages about the wifi card   but I did get, as shown by ifconfig, that I now had a wifi0 interface as well as the wlan0 one.   I also got a message that wifi0 was renamed to wlan0.  I wish I'd noticed that the first time, I wouldn't have edited my wifi-radar.conf file to use wifi0 instead of wlan0!  

The upshot is that my cards will work with the orinoco modules or with the hostap ones. I'm going to leave the orinoco modules blacklisted for now and see how things go.  

Does anyone have comments about which set of modules are best to use?  

I'm going to try wifi-radar out at Starbucks and see what that gets me!  

I'll report back on that.

[Meanie]

 Coming back to the issue of putting the following lines into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

#blacklist orinoco_cs
#blacklist orinoco
#blacklist hostap
#blacklist hostap_cs


Yesterday I blacklisted the hostap modules by removing the #s. As I said this gave me a wlan0 interface and it was fine in use. It then occurred to me to reverse what I did.     So I blacklisted the orinoco modules instead.

When I restarted, I got no error messages about the wifi card   but I did get, as shown by ifconfig, that I now had a wifi0 interface as well as the wlan0 one.   I also got a message that wifi0 was renamed to wlan0.  I wish I'd noticed that the first time, I wouldn't have edited my wifi-radar.conf file to use wifi0 instead of wlan0!  

The upshot is that my cards will work with the orinoco modules or with the hostap ones. I'm going to leave the orinoco modules blacklisted for now and see how things go.  

Does anyone have comments about which set of modules are best to use?  

I'm going to try wifi-radar out at Starbucks and see what that gets me!  

I'll report back on that.

you must be using an old version of wifi-radar because the newer versions auto detect the wifi interface rather than having you to specify it in the config file...

[tux]

 Coming back to the issue of putting the following lines into /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

#blacklist orinoco_cs
#blacklist orinoco
#blacklist hostap
#blacklist hostap_cs


Yesterday I blacklisted the hostap modules by removing the #s. As I said this gave me a wlan0 interface and it was fine in use. It then occurred to me to reverse what I did.     So I blacklisted the orinoco modules instead.

When I restarted, I got no error messages about the wifi card   but I did get, as shown by ifconfig, that I now had a wifi0 interface as well as the wlan0 one.   I also got a message that wifi0 was renamed to wlan0.  I wish I'd noticed that the first time, I wouldn't have edited my wifi-radar.conf file to use wifi0 instead of wlan0!  

The upshot is that my cards will work with the orinoco modules or with the hostap ones. I'm going to leave the orinoco modules blacklisted for now and see how things go.  

Does anyone have comments about which set of modules are best to use?  

I'm going to try wifi-radar out at Starbucks and see what that gets me!  

I'll report back on that.

you must be using an old version of wifi-radar because the newer versions auto detect the wifi interface rather than having you to specify it in the config file...

Thanks Meanie,
I'll check the vintage of wifi-radar I have. I just took the one in the repositories. If it is out of date I'll see about installing from the latest tarball.  It's about time for me to get my compiling feet wet!

 I'll also try deleting the conf file and maybe some of the bits in the iface file, I think I mean iface file  , followed by reboots and see what happens.