Wifi under OZ3.5.1/GPE

[Shdwdrgn]

I am using a D-Link DCF-660W and have noticed under gpe that when the card is inserted, WLAN0 shows up under ifconfig, however there is no attempt made to connect to a network.  After speaking with Kergoth last night, I realize that this is not the 'proper' way to fix this problem, however I wanted to document that the issue can be fixed without installing any new software, it just requires editing some files.

(Note that everything listed below is done by editing files.  I realize there are some GUI utilities already in place which would do some of these modifications, but I documented everything from the command line.)

Edit /etc/pcmcia/network
 comment out line 66 --> # exit 0
(This line exits the scripts after adding wlan0 to ifconfig.  It prevents the wireless script from ever being called)

 beginning at line 145, add the following block...
(Required because dhcpcd and dump are not present on this build)

Code: [Select]

elif [ -x /sbin/udhcpc ]; then
    log "/sbin/dhcpc -f --interface=$DEVICE & > /dev/null" || exit 1
edit /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts
(This can also be set up from the WLAN config, or the network config utilities)

Code: [Select]

    case "$ADDRESS" in
    *,*,*,*)
  ESSID=your_ssid
  MODE=ad-hoc
  CHANNEL=1
  RATE=auto
    ;;
    esac
edit /etc/pcmcia/network.opts
(Also can bet set up from the network config utility)

Code: [Select]

 DHCP="y"
After making these changes, I was able to successfully connect to my WLAN, pull DHCP info from the network, and ping out to the internet.  The connection is noticably slow - it takes about 10-15 seconds to actually set everything up, but at least it gets me online until the OZ team is able to put out there next release.

[jamesm]

Did you happen to use any encryption during your testing?

I'm assuming that WEP keys can be set in the wireless.opts config. I have thus far been using a script that simply calls iwconfig/ifconfig with the appropriate parameters.

[Shdwdrgn]

Actually, no I didn't.  You should be able to set the WEP keys in wireless.opts, or in the network config utility.  The script /etc/pcmcia/wireless actually does all the appropriate iwconfig calls already, and appears to be the same one being used in Opie, it just needed some minor tweaks to work with what's available.

[kergoth]

Opie's wireless configuration app writes to /etc/network/interfaces, not /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts.  So, /etc/pcmcia/wireless never actually does anything, and isnt "used" by Opie in any way, shape or form.  

Cardmgr executes that script, but under normal circumstances, it doesn't actually do anything.  Then hotplug is called when the wlan0 interface is created (cardmgr loading the module).  When that happens, /etc/hotplug/net.agent is called, which calls 'ifup wlan0'.  That configures the interface using the wireless_* entries in interfaces, and then brings it up via normal methods (dhcp, static, what have you).

If you write configuration into wireless.opts, then the pcmcia wireless script will indeed do work to setup the interface.  There's no way to easily ascertain whether that will be called before or after the hotplug script that calls ifup on the interface, and doing it this way, while it may function, isn't the supported methodology.
--
Chris "kergoth" Larson