On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Timothy Murphy <gayleard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Paul Johnson wrote: > > The card I am using in this ThinkPad T43 laptop at the moment is > an Orinoco Classic Silver PCMCIA card. > Actually, I have it working at this instant under NetworkManager (NM). > Typically, it didn't start when I re-booted under NM. > Then when I booted again it did. Most wireless drivers have an option to turn on verbose debug information. I've done it with ipw3945. I suggest that would be your next step. I think you are mistaken in saying that "/sbin/iwlist scan" is not useful. It tells you if your computer can see any wireless routers, and it gives their names and channels. Sometimes getting system-config-network to work properly is as simple as setting the channel, name, and wep key correctly. Similarly, "/sbin/ifconfig" shows you if the wireless device has obtained an IP number. It is important to know that. It shows if the card has a driver loaded. I'm a little puzzled that you say you have 2 identical laptops with orinoco_cs and one does associate and the other does not. If you have exactly the same hardware in the same place at the same time, it seems to me that they will behave in the same way. IF they don't, it makes me suspect a pcmcia card or port is damaged. Nevertheless, on the one that sometimes joins and does not, I'd say you are close to getting at the source of the trouble, but relying on NetworkManager won't help you figure out what it is. Instead of rebooting, I usually do this /sbin/service NetworkManager stop /sbin/service NetworkManagerDispatcher stop /sbin/rmmod iwl3945 /sbin/rmmod mac80211 (use /sbin/lsmod to see modules you have loaded, for me these are the ones) Then if you try "/sbin/ifup eth1" again, it should trigger a reload of the modules, and you can durn dmesg to try to track the association process. As long as you keep trying on the same wireless network, this will be informative. if you move to a new one, well, you see that apparently random inexplicable behavior. I'm especially disappointed to learn that the only place where NetworkManager on my laptop can get an IP address is a coffee shop where I hate the coffee. In my home, where I run the router, NM has never never worked. For some reason, it just can't send a WEP key through properly. wifi-radar can do it, and so can s-c-n. How disappointing. I used to have an orinoco_cs silver card and it did work pretty well. But, to be honest, all of the laptops we have now have the builtin wireless. I guess you choose your poison. Out of curiosity, I went and read some emails in the orinoco_cs user's list. This one seems to indicate problems with that driver and newer kernels http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=47A8BD2A.5040608%40research.telcordia.com&forum_name=orinoco-users The part that still has me stumped is that two similarly configured systems with orinoco_cs behave differently. I wouldn't have expected that one. -- Paul E. Johnson Professor, Political Science 1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504 University of Kansas
