[Prism54-devel] initialisation behavior

[Johannes Zellner]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 10:25:01AM +0100, Bernhard Seibold wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Great work, folks. The driver now works for me. But one thing really
> annoying is the way you do the initialisation. I wondered for about a
> week why the card didn't do any initialisation and no one complained
> about it, until i found out, that i first have to bring up the
> interface.
> Sorry, but in my opinion thats really stupid, and it's not the default
> behaviour. When establishing a wlan connection, you usually modprobe the
> driver (or hotplug modprobes it) then you (or your scripts) do a iwlist
> to see what access points are around, then pick one, and then do a dhcp
> request. Now i have to patch all network scripts to first bring up the
> interface.
> So i hope you reconsider that issue and make the driver even better.

This was a crucial hint!!!

After weeks of my SMC 2802 beeing non-operational, I brought up now the
interface FIRST and then configured it and everything works fine!

On Debian /etc/network/interfaces looks like:

# !!! didnt' work !!!
#
iface eth2 inet static
        pre-up /sbin/lsmod | /bin/grep -q prism54 || /sbin/modprobe prism54
        address ...
        network ...
        netmask ...
        broadcast ...
        wireless_mode "Ad-Hoc"
        wireless_essid "my_essid"
        wireless_key "restricted FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF"


# !!! this works, as it configures eth2 after it is brought up !!!
# Note: the "up" commands are executed after the interface is brought up.
#
iface eth2 inet static
        pre-up /sbin/lsmod | /bin/grep -q prism54 || /sbin/modprobe prism54
        address ...
        network ...
        netmask ...
        broadcast ...
        up iwconfig eth2 mode "Ad-Hoc"
        up iwconfig eth2 essid "my_essid"
        up iwconfig eth2 key FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF


Maybe:

1. The driver should be changed to restore the old behaviour, so that the
   ifup wireless_ commands work.
2. The important point that the interface has to be brought up first should be
   published in a prominent place maybe on the prism54 web site!

-- 
Johannes