Laptops :: wlan problems with laptop undocked



Greetings all and I hope someone can help with one...

Toshiba Portege 7010ct with docking station with a DSL 3.4 Frugal install.

The Ehome 103 wireless usb works fine with ndiswrapper, however when I shutdown, undock the laptop and reboot, the usb wireless adapter is no longer recognized when I plug it in.

lsusb shows the following when docked:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 07d1:3c05 D-Link System

Undocked with the usb plugged in:

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

I might add that the usb ports are also built into the docking station.  The usb port on the laptop is not available when the unit is docked.

I'm still somewhat of a noob to Linux so if any of the members have any ideas, it would be greatly appreciated.  It would be nice to have wireless connectivity when undocked with this machine.  DSL has brought this old box back to life (like lightning when I run toram)..
If the laptop's own usb ports cannot be used while docked, that sounds like some of the usb hardware is in the dock..

You could check the bios if there's any option related to this.
If it's a hardware limitation, it cannot be solved in software..
Quote (curaga @ Oct. 05 2007,10:57)
If the laptop's own usb ports cannot be used while docked, that sounds like some of the usb hardware is in the dock..

You could check the bios if there's any option related to this.
If it's a hardware limitation, it cannot be solved in software..

I'm thinking he means physically blocked or unavalible.

What does lsmod say about the usb adaptor/chip itself. Does the dock have USB2 or 1.1? What about the laptop?

Can you plug in a flash drive or usb mouse and have that work outside of the dock?

Or can you plug in a powered usb hub (not the dock) and then plug in the ehome adaptor to the powered hub?
You are correct, the usb to the laptop is physically blocked by the docking station.  Undocked, the laptop does recognize my flash usb and I can mount the file system.  However when undocked, lsusb is not seeing the chip version of the wireless-usb like it does when the laptop is docked.  lsmod yields the following while the laptop is undocked and the usb-wireless is plugged in:

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
soundcore               3428   0 (autoclean)
mousedev                3832   0
hid                    22372   0 (unused)
input                   3168   0 [mousedev hid]
unionfs                68800   7
nls_iso8859-1           2844   1 (autoclean)
nls_cp437               4348   1 (autoclean)
serial                 52100   0 (autoclean)
usb-uhci               21868   0 (unused)
usbcore                57824   1 [hid usb-uhci]
ds                      6536   2
yenta_socket            9504   2
pcmcia_core            39840   0 [ds yenta_socket]
thermal                 6564   0 (unused)
processor               8976   0 [thermal]
fan                     1568   0 (unused)
button                  2508   0 (unused)
battery                 5888   0 (unused)
ac                      1824   0 (unused)
rtc                     7036   0 (autoclean)
cloop                   8740   2
ide-cd                 28512   0
ide-scsi                8816   0

of course I have not yet activated ndiswrapper here.  So after activating ndiswrapper, and running iwconfig wlan0 essid for my network:

error for wireless request "set ESSID" (8b1A)  :
SET failed on devive wlan0 ; No such device.

When the laptop is docked and I modprobe ndiswrapper, wlan0 is assigned, but it appears when the laptop is undocked, ndiswrapper is not receiving the device id and therefore cannot assign a wlan id.

On the bios side, the only relevant sections I have been able to find are:

usb legacy emulation= disabled/enabled (tried both ways)
device config= all devices/setup by os (again tried both ways)

As far as I know, both the laptop and the docking port are usb 1.1

Could this possible be an issue with hotplug?

Thanks again for the input.
Do you have a powered hub you can try out?
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