Boot without the wireless hoops...

I am trying out Vector Linux as it was recommended by various folks as fast,
lightweight, stable and easy...

Mostly I like it, blindingly fast and mostly easy to set up. But, I do have one
problem that I haven't been able to crack so far.

Every time I boot, I have to reconfigure my wireless network, installing the
driver for ndiswrapper and setting up the IP address, gateway etc. Once I have
done this it works fine and I can get at the internal network and the Internet.
In fact, I am typing this on my Vector Laptop using the wireless connection.

How do I get it to load the driver and configure the network automatically
when I boot so that I don't have to reinstall it every time?

If Vector is like Slackware, you have in /etc/rc.d configuration files that you can edit to start up wireless instead of having to reconfigure every time. They are /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf and /etc/rc.d/wireless.conf. Open each with your favourite editor and have a look. There will be places where you can uncomment certain parameters, (that is, take the '#' from the front of certain lines and configure them for your particular wireless situaion). Here are some good pages to further explain the process:

Link 1
Link 2

I hope these help. :)

Thanks. I'll take a look at these tonight when I get home.

As a further question, would it matter that I have put the Windows
drivers for my card in my home directory?

(I woke up this morning wondering about that - I am even geeky
in my dreams!)

Quote:

Originally Posted by elija

As a further question, would it matter that I have put the Windows drivers for my card in my home directory?

If you have installed and configured ndiswrapper correctly, (which you obviously have), it has already gotten the necessary .inf file from your Windows driver directory and installed it to /etc/ndiswrapper. That's where it will be called from. Not from where the Windows driver is in your home directory.

Yeah - the driver is there.

At boot (and when I run the following) I get this

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 start

Starting network eth1 as 192.168.0.2/255.255.255.0...
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth1: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
SIOCSIFBRDADDR: No such device
eth1: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
SIOCSIFNETMASK: No such device

I don't even know where to start....

I think it may not be inserting ndiswrapper. After installing ndiswrapper, did you do the step:

Code:

ndiswrapper -m

?
Look in /etc/modprobe.d. if there is no configuration file there called "ndiswrapper" you could go back and do the ndiswrapper -m step or create a configuration file called ndiswrapper in /etc/modprobe.d. In it you would put this or something like it:

Code:

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

I know Slackware 12 uses /etc/modprobe.d for that. Vector may possibly want that configuration in /etc/modprobe.conf which is the older way of doing it. Crux still uses modprobe.conf.

EDIT: Can you post your /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf here?

This is /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

Quote:

alias eth1 ndiswrapper

This is /etc/rc.d/rc/inet1

Quote:

#!/bin/sh
# This file is supposed to be created by vnetadd
# and modified by vnetset.
# You can modify it by hand, but be careful ;-)
#
# GNU GPL (c) Eko M. Budi, 2004
# (c) Vector Linux, 2004
#

################################################## #########
## The settings
DEVICE='eth1'
DHCP='no'
IPADDR='192.168.0.2'
NETMASK='255.255.255.0'
GATEWAY='192.168.0.1'
PROBE='yes'

################################################## #########
## The script

## You may make customized script here
## If not, source the standard network
. /etc/rc.d/functions-network "$@"

This is /etc/rc.d/rc.inet.conf

Quote:

# /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf
#
# This file contains the configuration settings for network interfaces.
# If USE_DHCP[interface] is set to "yes", this overrides any other settings.
# If you don't have an interface, leave the settings null ("").

# You can configure network interfaces other than eth0,eth1... by setting
# IFNAME[interface] to the interface's name. If IFNAME[interface] is unset
# or empty, it is assumed you're configuring eth<interface>.

# Several other parameters are available, the end of this file contains a
# comprehensive set of examples.

# ================================================== ===========================

# Config information for eth0:
IPADDR[0]=""
NETMASK[0]=""
USE_DHCP[0]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[0]=""

# Config information for eth1:
IPADDR[1]=""
NETMASK[1]=""
USE_DHCP[1]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""

# Config information for eth2:
IPADDR[2]=""
NETMASK[2]=""
USE_DHCP[2]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[2]=""

# Config information for eth3:
IPADDR[3]=""
NETMASK[3]=""
USE_DHCP[3]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[3]=""

# Default gateway IP address:
GATEWAY=""

# Change this to "yes" for debugging output to stdout. Unfortunately,
# /sbin/hotplug seems to disable stdout so you'll only see debugging output
# when rc.inet1 is called directly.
DEBUG_ETH_UP="no"

## Example config information for wlan0. Uncomment the lines you need and fill
## in your info. (You may not need all of these for your wireless network)
#IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
#IPADDR[4]=""
#NETMASK[4]=""
#USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]="icculus-wireless"
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes"
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]=""
#WLAN_ESSID[4]=BARRIER05
#WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
##WLAN_RATE[4]="54M auto"
##WLAN_CHANNEL[4]="auto"
##WLAN_KEY[4]="D5AD1F04ACF048EC2D0B1C80C7"
##WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=7B1ABEEB5D197741923ED26727569C365E31212096A 0EAFAD563B268BAD01CAF TxRate=0"
#WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"
#WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="ndiswrapper"

## Some examples of additional network parameters that you can use.
## Config information for wlan0:
#IFNAME[4]="wlan0" # Use a different interface name nstead of
# the default 'eth4'
#HWADDR[4]="00:01:23:45:67:89" # Overrule the card's hardware MAC address
#MTU[4]="" # The default MTU is 1500, but you might need
# 1360 when you use NAT'ed IPSec traffic.
#DHCP_TIMEOUT[4]=15 # The default timeout for the DHCP client to
# wait for server resonse is 60 seconds, but
# you might want a shorter wait.
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes" # If you dont want /etc/resolv.conf overwritten
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes" # If you don't want ntp.conf overwritten
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes" # If you don't want the DHCP server to change
# your default gateway
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]="" # Request a specific IP address from the DHCP
# server
#WLAN_ESSID[4]=DARKSTAR # Here, you can override _any_ parameter
# defined in rc.wireless.conf, by prepending
# 'WLAN_' to the parameter's name. Useful for
# those with multiple wireless interfaces.
#WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=thekey TxRate=0"
# Some drivers require a private ioctl to be
# set through the iwpriv command. If more than
# one is required, you can place them in the
# IWPRIV parameter (space-separated, see the
# example).

Hopefully, this is something easy...

Quote:

Originally Posted by elija

This is /etc/rc.d/rc/inet1

Do you mean /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1? I guess Vector is configuring rc.inet1 instead of rc.inet1.conf. So that's the file I guess you should concentrate on. The thing that seems amiss to me is that ndiswrapper is configured for eth1. When you are configuring your wireless by hand are you configuring it as eth1? In the cases where I've dealt with it, ndiswrapper finds wireless devices at wlan0. Are these settings correct?

Code:

DHCP='no' IPADDR='192.168.0.2' NETMASK='255.255.255.0' GATEWAY='192.168.0.1' PROBE='yes'

If so, let's try this first:

Edit both /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper AND /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1. In both files change eth1 to wlan0. You will do this with your favourite editor as su. After making the changes, save and exit. Reboot and see if your wireless gets configured properly. After getting rebooted up and going, run from a terminal as su:

Code:

/sbin/iwconfig

And

Code:

/sbin/ifconfig

And post the results here. Doing this *may* fix your problem. Then again, it may not. If it doesn't, we can begin looking elsewhere.

eth1 is assigned when I configure it using the VASMCC gui tool.
I'm sufing with that config now.

Code:

root:# ifconfig eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:D2:70:D6:9E inet addr:192.168.0.2 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:18 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:34 (34.0 b) Interrupt:17 Base address:0x4000 Memory:ff9ff000-ff9fffff lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b) root:# iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. eth1 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"Home54" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:0F:B5:56:83:50 Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:15 dBm Retry limit:15 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:AAED-DB2C-1C95-115B-7E7B-6CB0-3694-CF2B-C32D-C596-A4EC-51D6-CAF8-8C59-03A4-BD21 Security mode:open Power Management:off Link Quality=86/100 Signal level=-47 dBm Noise level=-48 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:2 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:19 Missed beacon:0

I also found this in /etc/rc.d/rc.boot.inet. I don't know how relevant it is

Code:

# (c) Vector Linux, 2004 INET=${2:-"inet0"} IPADDR="" NETMASK="" GATEWAY="" DHCP="" DEVICE="" export PATH="/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin" for CMD in `cat /proc/cmdline`; do # echo $CL KEY=${CMD%=*} VAL=${CMD#*=} if [ "$KEY" = "$INET" ]; then DEVICE=`echo $VAL | cut -f 1 -d ','` DHCP=`echo $VAL | cut -f 2 -d ','` if [ "$DHCP" = "dhcp" ]; then DHCP="yes" . /etc/rc.d/functions-network $1 exit $? else IPADDR=$DHCP DHCP="no" NETMASK=`echo $VAL | cut -f 3 -d ','` GATEWAY=`echo $VAL | cut -f 4 -d ','` PROBE=`echo $VAL | cut -f 5 -d ','` . /etc/rc.d/functions-network $1 exit $? fi fi done exit 1

I'm wondering if another wireless driver is getting loaded giving you eth1. If that is the case, you may need to blacklist a driver. Can you post the results of:

Code:

/sbin/lsmod

Also, lets see:

Code:

/sbin/lspci

So I can see your exact wireless device. I'm kind of flying in the dark as I just have never used Vector and am not aware of the exact way they do things. Do they provide you with a wireless configuration utility?