On Tue, 2004-08-10 at 03:23, Peter Smith wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> This is going to be a bit long, I am afraid ...
>
> I have installed FC2 on a Dell notebook.
> I have a Xircom PCMCIA card for ethernet connection at work and at home
> (two different sets of IP numbers), and a NetComm wireless card for home
> use. The NetComm card is listed as requiring the prism54 driver, and is
> a rebadged Intersil, I guess.
> I cannot install both cards at the same time, as the Xircom card is
> double thickness.
> I am confused. My questions:
> 1. Is it possible to set up the Xircom card, with work IP numbers as
> "eth0" and with home IPs as "eth1", and the wireless card as "eth2" ,
> and not have to reconfigure everything every time I change location?
> 2. What is the correct way to set up the wireless card - should it be
> possible with the GUI screens, should I use terminal commands, or should
> I just edit the appropriate configuration files directly? (If so, which?)
> 3. Should I identify the gateway using the GUI screen or the"route"
> command. They seem to have different effects.
Sounds like you have the same or similar laptop that I do. I have the
Dell Latitude CPx. Use the Xircom PCMCIA and a D-Link DWL-G650 wireless
card. The DWL-G650 also uses the prism54 driver. In my case I use DHCP
at work when using the Xircom card and DHCP at home when using the
wireless card.
Not sure if this is part of the problem or not, but for all of your
PCMCIA cards make sure you uncheck the box that says activate at boot in
the network configuration window. This is a known problem (which I
doubt will ever be fixed.)
On my system the wireless card works and is loaded as eth0 the same as
the xircom card. I have said it before the way wireless cards are
handled under linux (I think this applies to all distributions not just
Fedora) is fairly poor. You can get it to work but it is not really
pretty.
In my case, like yours, I can not really select the prism54 driver nor
is the card listed correctly under the network configuration tool. I
believe it shows as a 3com. What is really funny is that the same
configuration is used whether I have the xircom card or the D-Link card
inserted. Like you I kind of expected to have two configurations that
would be setup with the proper one selected based on the card inserted.
Best suggestion for your setup is to use DHCP. Most likely the AP you
have will supply DHCP not only for your wireless card but for your
xircom card as well. At work they probably have DHCP but may not. In
that case you will need to hard code the IP address, subnet, and gateway
info, as well as the DNS information.
I have not spent anytime on it but I believe there is a thread or two in
the news group about using profiles which may resolve this for you. But
if you can use DHCP I have found that to be painless moving from work to
home and back.
And don't forget to disable activation at boot time for your PCMCIA
cards. They will magically start anyway when the PCMCIA services
start. include ("rant_number_1_here.php");
--
Scot L. Harris <webid@xxxxxxxxxx>
