FC5, wireless, NetworkManager--a discovery

[Matthew Saltzman]

I've seen some discussion on fedora-list and networkmanager-list related 
to issues with wireless and NM in FC5, and I have an experience to relate 
that I think might be worth investigating.  My wireless and NM have been 
much more stable after acting on it.  This is a bit long, so bear with me.

I installed FC5 on my Thinkpad T41 with e1000 wired and ipw2200 wireless. 
On first install, the e1000 was assigned to eth0 and the ipw2200 was 
assigned to eth1.  That assignment was indicated in /etc/sysconfig/hwconf 
and there were appropriate aliases in /etc/modprobe.conf.  Also, 
system-config-network showed that both cards were correctly detected and 
assigned to device names as above.  There was an interface created for 
eth0 (the e1000) but none for eth1.  I created a wireless interface for 
eth1, started NM, and everything seemed to work.  I also added netowrk 
mointor applets to my taskbar for both interfaces.

After then next boot, I noticed that the wireless interface was now 
attached to eth0 and the wired one to eth1 (the signal strength graphic in 
the network monitor moved to the other one).  None of the config files had 
changed--hwconf, modprobe.conf, and sys-config-net all showed wireless on 
eth1, but ifconfig and iwconfig showed that the wireless was eth0 and the 
wired was eth1.  NM seemed to work, but its behavior was somewhat flakey. 
in particular, it would often have trouble resuming after suspend if I had 
changed networks.  Occasionally, the ipw2200 driver would launch into an 
infinite loop.

Rebooting seemed to assign the network devices arbitrarily.  Sometimes 
wireless was on eth1 and sometimes it was on eth0.

So here's what I did (a solution I happened on a few months back when I 
was thinking about forcing the assignment of NICs to devices for other 
reasons).

Check /etc/sysconfig/hwconf for the original assignnment.  In my case, 
that was e1000 to eth0 and ipw2200 to eth1.  Add the following lines 
(aliases as appropriate for your drivers):

     alias eth0 e1000
     alias eth1 ipw2200
     install ipw2200 /sbin/modprobe -q eth0; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ipw2200

The last line has the effect of forcing the eth0 module to load before the 
ipw2200 module.  Thus the ipw2200 module is always eth1.

Now if you use sys-config-net, delete all interfaces and devices and 
reboot.  The devices will be redetected and should get their proper 
assignments.  NM should continue to just work.

After doing this, I have had none of the bizzare problems with wireless or 
NM.  I've heard that this inconsistent device detection problem is a known 
issue with the FC5 kernels, but I haven't had a chance to look at 
Bugzilla.  Anyway, if you are having wireless issues, give it a shot and 
let us know if it helps.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs