pcmcia issues/Xircom/D-Link

[Rick Stevens]

Scot L. Harris wrote:
> I have a Dell Latitude CPx laptop loaded with FC1 latest patches.
> 
> Previously posted regarding the D-Link DWL-650 card (no luck there
> yet).  

The D-Link DWL-650 uses a TI chipset and TI won't release open-source
drivers.  You can use ndiswrapper to make it go, though. You'll need the
Windows drivers off the CD so ndiswrapper can use their binaries, but it
works.

	http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net

> Ran into another odd one.  Last night when I loaded the system I popped
> my Xircom card into the pcmcia slot and everything configured and setup
> correctly.  Was then able to apply the patches.  
> 
> After reboot I was not able to get on the network.  More to the point
> the card appeared to be configured, had pulled an IP address and was
> marked active but it would not talk on the network.  Nothing out and
> nothing in.  Link integrity to the switch showed good.
> 
> Just now I shutdown, pulled the card, booted up, inserted the card, and
> now it works.
> 
> I vaguely recall a something from the list regarding a similar problem
> but have not been able to find it.  The only hint I have is that it
> appears the interface tries to come up before the pcmcia stuff is
> initialized during start up.  At least that is what the messages look
> like.  Tried to confirm that by going through the boot.log and dmesg but
> those do not appear to have the full startup sequence.  
> 
> What is interesting is that the card appears to get DHCP information but
> after that it does not pass any information. 

It has to do with when the default route is set.  If you reboot with
the card in and it doesn't work, do a "netstat -rn" and you'll probably
see that you have no default route.  A simple "/etc/rc.d/init.d/network
restart" should make it active again.  You should also make sure that
the link in your /etc/rc.d/rcx.d directory runs AFTER the pcmcia stuff
is started.  By default, the link is

	/etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S10network

If you rename it to

	/etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S24pcmcia-network

it should work properly when you boot with the card installed or not.
Hey, it's ugly, but it works.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   To err is human.  To forgive, a large sum of money is needed.    -
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