The mystery of WiFi

[Timothy Murphy]

Jonathan Underwood wrote:

>> My claim is: when the laptop booted (without NM)
>> it did not try to bring eth0 up,
>> even though there was a file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 .
>>
> 
> Perhaps you forgot to turn on the "network" service - in F8 it is off
> by default because NM is on by default. You need to turn NM off and
> chkconfig network on.

Thanks for the response.
But I always have NM off, as it does not work with all my devices,
and I ran "service network restart" anyway without finding eth0.

I had brief access to the laptop last night.
It did bring up eth0 this time,
but it did not find the access point.

I am fairly baffled by WiFi -
I often find that device 1 will connect to access point A
but not to access point B
while device 2 does the opposite,
although they have identical settings (except for MAC address).

What I'd really like is some tool that would tell me
what is happening at the lowest level,
explicitly listing the packets that are exchanged.

In the present case, for example, the light on the access point
flashes when I run "service network restart",
so there is clearly some exchange of packets.
But /var/log/messages on the laptop simply reports
that no link was established.
(I don't have that laptop with me, so cannot give the exact message.)

I've never seen a good WiFi trouble-shooter.
Most writers seem to assume that what works for them
is bound to work for everyone else in the world.

In my view, the Linux "wireless tools" were very good when they came out,
but there does not seem to have been any attempt to improve them
over the years.
The system-config-network variants are almost useless, in my experience,
while NetworkManager just tries to do too much, in my opinion.
I have never had any problems with ethernet or bluetooth,
so don't feel the need for a program that tries to deal with them
as well as WiFi.
I just want a good WiFi program.



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland