Please remove xxx.lan1.co.nz from your database
Thanks very much
Gail

----------
From: jason linhart[SMTP:jasonsummary.net]
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 7:18 PM
To: postmasterlocal
Subject: SmartPop Mail Delivery Failure

The attached message could not be delivered due to the following error:
No resolvable mailbox address in:
TO:<linux-wlan-userabsoval.com>,

attached mail follows:

Thorsten Jungblut <tjungbluuni-koblenz.de> wrote:

>> This is the contents of /proc/interrupts with the card installed:
>>
>> CPU0
>> 0: 414791 XT-PIC timer
>> 1: 2 XT-PIC keyboard
>> 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
>> 4: 22466 XT-PIC serial
>> 5: 0 XT-PIC prism2_cs
>
>are you sure that interrupts are working ?
>the 0 under cpu0 says that no interrupt arrived yet...

Actually, I was sure they were not working, I just didn't have a clue
what to do about it. There is NO documentation about any of this, only
limited hints in the mailing list archive, which is impossible to find,
and no feedback from the software (even in debug mode) about what was
happening. After fighting with it for ANOTHER 12 hours I finally figured
it out.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good puzzle, but one paragraph about
PCIC_OPTS would have saved me hours and a link to the mailing list
archive in an obvious place would also have been a life saver.

1) I updated the BIOS to the latest version. It was at Sept 2000, I
updated to Jan 2001. This allowed the cardbus adapter board to get
allocated a PCI interrupt. The Ricoh RL5C475 was now allocated interrupt
9, but the prism2_cs was still getting interrupt 5. This turned out to be
critical, although I didn't know it at the time. The symptom changed from
card silent to an entire machine hang, complete lockup of all processes,
cntrl-alt-del didn't work, etc. I'm unclear on what really happened here,
the card worked with Windows without the BIOS update, but the BIOS update
turned out to be required to work under Linux.

2) I set PCIC_OPTS="irq_mode=0". I was getting desperate at this point, I
had seen a suggestion to set irq_mode to 1 on the mailing list, that
didn't work. Then I did a search for documentation of what PCIC_OPTS were
available and what they meant. I couldn't find ANY documentation on this.
So I just started changing it till I found one that worked, set irq_mode
to 0. Good thing it was 0, I wasn't going to have tried 37 or anything
like that.

Setting it to zero appears to force PCI mode. Both the Ricoh and the
prism2 were now allocated interrupt 9. This was the big break through,
the light on the card went to solid on, the access point listed the card
as a client. Not quite there yet though, Linux couldn't send any packets
(packets were sent somewhere I guess, they just vanished).

3) Examining ifconfig for wlan0 showed crazy IP address settings. I was
running the /etc/pcmcia/network script that came with pcmcia-cs-3.1.24.
This turned out to be a bad thing, it depends on iwconfig, which doesn't
work with wlan-ng. Lucky for me I had had kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.14-5.0
installed from the original RedHat install. The /etc/pcmcia/network
script that came with it was still present as /etc/pcmcia/network.O and
contained code to use the usual ifup/ifdown scripts instead of iwconfig
and custom code in the new script. The old one worked perfectly and the
link came up!

Lessons learned:

My motherboard, apparently can only safely allocate interrupts 9, 10, or
11 to PCI cards under Linux. Linux is convinced that it can allocate
other interrupts, and indeed allocating interrupt 5 crashes the machine,
so it does something, but wasn't useful.

There really really needs to be documentation for PCIC_OPTS.

wlan-ng is not fully compatible with pcmcia-cs-3.1.24 (bad
/etc/pcmcia/network script) or kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.14-5.0 (my machine is
incompatible old version of cardmgr). I needed to install a mixture of
the two versions.

There really should be a link to one of the mailing list archives at
<http://www.linux-wlan.com/linux-wlan/lists.html>. I used the archive at
<http://www.lifix.fi/extarchive/lwlan/>, but latter I used Google and it
found others.

The symbolic link at /lib/modules/x.y.z/pcmcia/prism2_cs.o causes
problems. I had to either hard link it or modify the card database to
load prism2sta_cs.o directly.

I lucked out in getting the D-Link DWL-500 instead of the Addtron
AWA-100. Everything I could find about them at first indicated that they
were the same. The Addtron was cheaper so I was going to buy it. Luck for
me it was out of stock and I got the D-Link instead, because other people
on the mailing list (which I hadn't seen at first) seem to say that it
doesn't work (uses a PCI-ISA adapter chip instead of a full Cardbus-PCI
bridge chip).

Everything is working now, the universe smiles on my network. Now I'm off
to decipher policy based routing. I want to get load sharing (or at the
very least failover) working between my DSL line and my cable modem. The
DSL line is down at least 15 minutes a day, but the cable modem is really
slow on weekday afternoons. I want everything to automatically avoid
which ever one is not working and distribute traffic between both of
them when they are both working.

Happy happy, joy joy.
Jason

-----------------
JasonSummary.Net
-----------------
Programming today is a race between software engineers,
striving to build better and more idiot-proof programs
and the Universe, trying to produce better and more idiots.
So far, the Universe is winning.
  -- Rich Cook

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