linux orinoco gold and netgeat m401 pcmcias?

i have both orinoco gold and netgear m401 pcmcia cards
for my red hat linux 9 laptop and am having trouble
keeping it configured correctly to support using either of them
(not at the same time).

* the orinoco card sometimes comes up as eth0 and sometimes as eth1,
i haven't been able to find a way to force it to eth1 (no luck
with an alias in modules.conf)

* if the orinoco comes up as eth0 then i can't figure out how
to spec the ssid, when i try via the redhat 'network settings'
tool it tells me that the mac address was unexpected

* the netgear uses the prism2 driver which used to work (as wlan0),
messing with the orinoco configuration has caused the netgear to
now appear as eth0, i can't figure out how to force it back
to wlan0

i'd appreciate some advice on how to setup my system so that
i can use either card and either spec or not spec the ssid to use.

i have installed orinoco-0.13e and linux-wlan-ng-0.2.1-pre9.

tks
agg

Average GG wrote:

> i have both orinoco gold and netgear m401 pcmcia cards
> for my red hat linux 9 laptop and am having trouble
> keeping it configured correctly to support using either of them
> (not at the same time).
>
> * the orinoco card sometimes comes up as eth0 and sometimes as eth1,
> i haven't been able to find a way to force it to eth1 (no luck
> with an alias in modules.conf)

You must have a very weird setup.
Why do you want it to be eth1, anyway?
What difference does it make?
I have an Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card which works perfectly
with the standard kernel orinoco_cs WiFi driver.
It always comes up as eth0.

Different PCMCIA cards are normally dealt with
by different entries in /etc/pcmcia/config .
(The cardmgr asks for the identity of the card,
and determines the driver to use from this config file.)

> * if the orinoco comes up as eth0 then i can't figure out how
> to spec the ssid, when i try via the redhat 'network settings'
> tool it tells me that the mac address was unexpected

Does the MAC address matter?
I've never been asked for it.
You can set the ESSID in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts ,
or say "iwconfig eth0 essid whatever".



--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: (E-Mail Removed)
tel: +353-86-233 6090
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

My setup is not weird at all. Sometimes I attach to my own
WAP so I need to specify the SSID which I have associated with eth1.
When the orinoco card comes up as eth0 I can't find any way to
get it to use my own SSID. When I'm not home I want it to associate
with any WAP found.
I use kismet on occasion and the config file for it has the
driver and interface to use as well. These are some of the
reasons that I want to use a specific interface for my wireless activity.
For some reason, /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts does not work for me.
I believe that I read somewhere that the card has not been associated
yet and that's why cardmgr doesn't know to use wireless.opts.
Something like that anyway.
The other problem that I have is that if I try:
iwconfig eth0 ssid "whatever" the interface usually has
already associated with the wrong WAP and I can't figure how
to make it reassociate using the new ssid.
If I try 'iwconfig eth0 ap any' I get an error saying that that
isn't supported.
agg

Timothy Murphy <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<w5j5b.30235$(E-Mail Removed)>...
> Average GG wrote:
>
> > i have both orinoco gold and netgear m401 pcmcia cards
> > for my red hat linux 9 laptop and am having trouble
> > keeping it configured correctly to support using either of them
> > (not at the same time).
> >
> > * the orinoco card sometimes comes up as eth0 and sometimes as eth1,
> > i haven't been able to find a way to force it to eth1 (no luck
> > with an alias in modules.conf)
>
> You must have a very weird setup.
> Why do you want it to be eth1, anyway?
> What difference does it make?
> I have an Orinoco Gold PCMCIA card which works perfectly
> with the standard kernel orinoco_cs WiFi driver.
> It always comes up as eth0.
>
> Different PCMCIA cards are normally dealt with
> by different entries in /etc/pcmcia/config .
> (The cardmgr asks for the identity of the card,
> and determines the driver to use from this config file.)
>
> > * if the orinoco comes up as eth0 then i can't figure out how
> > to spec the ssid, when i try via the redhat 'network settings'
> > tool it tells me that the mac address was unexpected
>
> Does the MAC address matter?
> I've never been asked for it.
> You can set the ESSID in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts ,
> or say "iwconfig eth0 essid whatever".

Average GG wrote:

> My setup is not weird at all. Sometimes I attach to my own
> WAP so I need to specify the SSID which I have associated with eth1.
> When the orinoco card comes up as eth0 I can't find any way to
> get it to use my own SSID. When I'm not home I want it to associate
> with any WAP found.

I'm no expert, and don't understand your setup.
Why does the card sometimes come up as eth1,
and sometimes as eth0?
Is there another ethernet device?

I thought the first ethernet device that comes up is called eth0,
the next one eth1, and so on.
I didn't think there was anything one could do about this
(apart from altering the order at which different devices come up).

> The other problem that I have is that if I try:
> iwconfig eth0 ssid "whatever" the interface usually has
> already associated with the wrong WAP and I can't figure how
> to make it reassociate using the new ssid.
> If I try 'iwconfig eth0 ap any' I get an error saying that that
> isn't supported.

This seems to work for me, eg
==================================================
Script started on Fri 05 Sep 2003 09:41:22 IST
[tim@william tim]$ su
Password:
[root@william tim]# iwconfig eth0
eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"maths.tcd.ie" Nickname:"HERMES I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.457GHz Access Point: 02:02:2D:4A:52:80
....
[root@william tim]# iwconfig eth0 essid ""
[root@william tim]# iwconfig eth0
eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"CIMSYS" Nickname:"HERMES I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.422GHz Access Point: 00:02:2D:41:A1:0E
....
[root@william tim]# iwconfig eth0 essid maths.tcd.ie
[root@william tim]# iwconfig eth0
eth0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"maths.tcd.ie" Nickname:"HERMES I"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.457GHz Access Point: 02:02:2D:4A:52:80
....
[root@william tim]# exit
exit
[tim@william tim]$ exit
Script done on Fri 05 Sep 2003 09:42:51 IST
==================================================

(I'm running RedHat-9.0 with linux-2.4.22 .)

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: (E-Mail Removed)
tel: +353-86-233 6090
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

In article <(E-Mail Removed) >, Average GG wrote:
> * the orinoco card sometimes comes up as eth0 and sometimes as eth1,
> i haven't been able to find a way to force it to eth1 (no luck
> with an alias in modules.conf)

man ifname

NAME
nameif - name network interfaces based on MAC addresses

SYNOPSIS
nameif [-c configfile] [-s]
nameif [-c configfile] [-s] {interface macaddress}

DESCRIPTION

nameif renames network interfaces based on mac addresses. When
no arguments are given /etc/mactab is read. Each line of it
contains an interface name and a Ethernet MAC address. Comments
are allowed starting with #. Otherwise the interfaces
specified on the command line are processed. nameif looks for
the interface with the given MAC address and renames it to
the name given.

When the -s argument is given all error messages go to the syslog.

When the -c argument is given with a file name that file is read
instead of /etc/mactab.


--
christian mautner -- chm bei istop punkt com -- ottawa, canada