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Hi,

I'm trying to reestablish a wifi connection in the ad-hoc mode, which i once
had, between my laptop and desktop computer. I've installed ipw2200 with all
dependencies and still i have strange problems with setting up the interface
on startup.

Any attempts to edit /etc/conf.d/net file with wifi specific directives are
ignored.

The net.eth0 script brings up the eth0 reading iface_eth0.... directives but
completely ignoring mode_eth0=... etc. The iwconfig output shows that none
of the directives are executed.

When I enter the settings manually, I can see the connetion between
computers (gentoo vs. winxp), but ping replies from winxp are not received
by gentoo laptop. Ethereal on winxp shows ARP requests, icmp request and
registers icmp replies but those are not being received by gentoo.

I belive there is something I didn't istall. Question is what :/

Please help,
Peter

Hello Peter,

I've been expierencing similar problems with the wireless config. I
think in the past something changed and lots of manuals are out-dated.

> Any attempts to edit /etc/conf.d/net file with wifi specific directives are
> ignored.

You should have a file called /etc/conf.d/net.eth0 (for eth0 is your
wireless device). If there is not such one, create one. It works the
same way as ./net.

> When I enter the settings manually, I can see the connetion between
> computers (gentoo vs. winxp), but ping replies from winxp are not received
> by gentoo laptop. Ethereal on winxp shows ARP requests, icmp request and
> registers icmp replies but those are not being received by gentoo.

Okay, that means that your wireless connection is established but Gentoo
doesn't know how to route that packages. You'll have to write your own
route table what is a bit tricky in my opinion or you install a DHCP
server.

> I belive there is something I didn't istall. Question is what :/

According to your description everything should be fine with the
packages.

> Please help,

I hope I did a bit:-)

> Peter

Greetings from Germany
Daniel Böhmer

Daniel Böhmer wrote:
> Hello Peter,
>
> I've been expierencing similar problems with the wireless config. I
> think in the past something changed and lots of manuals are out-dated.
>
>> Any attempts to edit /etc/conf.d/net file with wifi specific directives are
>> ignored.

Well, i dimly remeber a file /etc/conf.d/wireless...

>> When I enter the settings manually, I can see the connetion between
>> computers (gentoo vs. winxp), but ping replies from winxp are not received
>> by gentoo laptop. Ethereal on winxp shows ARP requests, icmp request and
>> registers icmp replies but those are not being received by gentoo.
>
> Okay, that means that your wireless connection is established but Gentoo
> doesn't know how to route that packages. You'll have to write your own
> route table what is a bit tricky in my opinion or you install a DHCP
> server.

Well, I guess it would be possible to get both the PCs into the same subnet?
In this case IMHO an according configuration in /etc/conf.d/net would be
sufficient.

If for example your Gentoo was 192.168.1.1 and your WinXP 192.168.0.1 your
/etc/conf.d/net should have a line like that:

config_eth0=( "192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.0.0" )

In this case the startup script should automatically route 192.168.0.0/16 over
eth0, shouldnt it?

>> Please help,
>
> I hope I did a bit:-)

Me too.

> Greetings from Germany

Add me. ;-)

Lukas

> Well, I guess it would be possible to get both the PCs into the same
> subnet?
> In this case IMHO an according configuration in /etc/conf.d/net would be
> sufficient.
>
> If for example your Gentoo was 192.168.1.1 and your WinXP 192.168.0.1 your
> /etc/conf.d/net should have a line like that:
>
> config_eth0=( "192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.0.0" )
>
> In this case the startup script should automatically route 192.168.0.0/16
> over
> eth0, shouldnt it?


Hmm, i don't believe this is the issue.
IP configuration was winxp: 192.168.0.1 gentoo 192.168.0.2 mask
255.255.255.0.

Here are the conf.d/net directives:
iface_eth0="192.168.0.2 broadcast 192.168.0.255 netmask 255.255.255.0"
gateway="eth0/192.168.0.1"

I think the problem is the software, which doesn't recognize statements in
conf.d/net (or conf.d/wireless which can be merged into /net according to
docs). I couldn't find which script is responsible for reading those entries
after installation of wifi software :/. Net.eth0 simply takes ethernet
statements like iface. If this is happening, maybe some lower level software
wasn't installed too?.

I've done the wireless installation by hand copying packages to
portage/distfiles dir and emerging as usual to perform the installation
without internet connection (no wifi, no net ). Here is the list of
packages gathered by studying info at www.gentoo-portage.com .:

hotplug-2004_09_23.tar.gz
ieee80211-1.1.13.tgz
ipw2200-1.0.1.tgz
ipw2200-fw-2.2.tgz
wireless_tools.28.tar.gz

Perhaps there's something missing or the combination of versions is
inapropriate. This was done with gentoo 2005.0 release.


With regards,
Peter

Hello,

> Hmm, i don't believe this is the issue.
> IP configuration was winxp: 192.168.0.1 gentoo 192.168.0.2 mask
> 255.255.255.0.

This is good. The same subnet makes it much easier.

> Here are the conf.d/net directives:
> iface_eth0="192.168.0.2 broadcast 192.168.0.255 netmask 255.255.255.0"
> gateway="eth0/192.168.0.1"

Seems to be okay, but I cannot say definitely because I am using DHCP to
bypass all that routing / IP stuff:-)

> Perhaps there's something missing or the combination of versions is
> inapropriate. This was done with gentoo 2005.0 release.

No, I think you've installed everything correctly. The wireless
connection can be established if you do it by hand and the TCP/IP stuff
is handled by the kernel. So if you didn't throw the TCP/IP section out
of your kernel config it will be able to do that fine.

Gentoo's Portage system is very clever and it won't fail to find the
correct packages for the WLAN driver what is pretty easy. I did it the
same way and beside from copying numerous packages by hand I didn't
expierence any problems...


I get the feeling that you have two problems:
1. The WLAN connection isn't established on startup, but it
actually works; so it has to be a problem with the config files
2. Linux doesn't know how to find the other IPs

I cannot give you the magic key but I think this will take us some steps
forward:
* Tell Linux how to route by hand as you did it with the wlan
config: after connecting with iwconfig use ifconfig to type in
IP adress, subnet and so on
* Add the WLAN data to the file /etc/conf.d/net according to the
following example from my box in the quotation

> config_ra0=( blablabla )
>
> modules_ra0=( "iwconfig" )
>
> mode_ra0="ad-hoc"
> essid_ra0="YourEssid"
> channel_ra0="1"
> rate_YourEssid="11or54"
> key_YourEssid="1234-5678-90AB-CDEF-1234-5678-90"

This should show us, if at least the WLAN parameters are read
correctly. The IP stuff will be solved later. Keep in mind that your
WLAN driver may have its own config file. My WLAN didn't work before I
copied all parameters to this file. Strange but might be your problem...


Daniel