CF boot / PCMCIA NIC problem


Forum: Networking
Topic: CF boot / PCMCIA NIC problem
started by: cox_douglas

Posted by cox_douglas on Aug. 19 2007,15:36
First, I *love* DSL.  Thanks so much to the development team for a truly fantastic effort...you guys rule.

My Compaq Armada 4131T has 48M of ram and has recently quit talking to one of the IDE buses, making my CD ROM and Hard Drive completely inaccessible.  Despite this minor inconvenience, I did a frugal install on a 64MB CF card, popped it into a PCMCIA adapter, and used Robert's brilliant PCMCIAfloppy image to boot DSL.  Works like a champ.

Here's the problem: my 16 bit PCMCIA wireless card will not come up on the network, even though the card is detected and seems to be functioning properly.  After a thorough scouring of the forums I thought I had found the problem, and booted with nodhcp (to avoid conflicting pumps) -- but I still cannot get a manual pump to put me on the network.

The PCMCIA card is an "Enterasys" that comes up on PCMCIA Tool as "Cabletron Roam About".  It loads the hermes, orinoco, and orinoco_cs modules in lsmod.  The card has two lights, and the power light comes on.  When I switch to root and 'ifconfig eth0 up', then 'iwconfig eth0 essid "mynet"' I get a couple of nice flashes from the card and it appears to find my wireless router.  Next I try pump -i eth0..."operation failed".  Taking some advice I found on the forum I booted with syslog turned on, and tailed the messages log.  When I reinsert the card it dutifully reports loading all three modules, and tells me that the card is ready.  After a pump -v command the log reports that the gateway, etc are 0.0.0.0, but I don't know how to change that or if it's even necessary (seems like it shouldn't be), but after a while I still get "operation failed" under the pump command.  I have also tried building a static route to my gateway and/or my wireless router, but that's not working either.  Could be my inexperience with the route command, however.

I have tried booting with the card in socket 0 and socket 1.  When I boot, regardless of the position of the card, it lists the orinoco, hermes, and orinoco_cs modules as unavailable, however it finds the CF card as /dev/hda1 and runs the normal detection sequence.  I have tried the nopcmcia cheatcode, since cardmgr seems to be started twice in the sequence when booting with the pcmcia modules disk, but the symptoms are the same.  I also tried copying the orinoco.o, orinoco_cs.o, and hermes.o files to the pcmcia driver disk.  This changes my error message at cardmgr initialization to "device not available", but the symptoms are the same once I get into the operating system.  BTW, it appears that when booting using the PCMCIAfloopy.img the system only looks for modules in the floppy mounted /additional_modules/ directory, but I could be wrong on that.  I have also tried inserting the NIC at various times during and after system startup, but again the symptoms are the same...card detected, acts normal, won't pull an address with pump.  I've also tried static IP, but that won't talk to the network either.

I know this card works with DSL, I have connected with it on this very machine with no problems (CD boot, when that was working), and have also had success connecting with it on my HP omnibook running DSL.  I'm also sure the network implementation works fine running from CF card frugal, I have connected with a PCMCIA linksys 10/100 etherfast PC Card (wired) and got a trouble free connection (i.e. two PCMCIA cards running, CF card adapter and NIC).  I'm using the 3.4 iso, BTW.

Sorry this post is so long, but really appreciate any advice you can give -- I must be missing something really simple!

respectfully,
Doug

Posted by curaga on Aug. 19 2007,16:05
Maybe you have conflicting drivers - maybe only one of those three is needed?

Did the automatic pump work with cd boot?

Posted by cox_douglas on Aug. 19 2007,16:15
Curaga -- thank you for your quick reply!  For some reason those three drivers always load with this card, it seems to work fine under normal circumstances.  The automatic pump worked great with the CD boot...I never needed any manual configuration at all.

Thanks!
Doug

Posted by curaga on Aug. 19 2007,16:24
I'm outta ideas what could cause it working on cd but not on CF.. Could you try booting without the card in, then plugging it in, removing all the drivers and trying one at a time (both pump & manual ip)?
Posted by cox_douglas on Aug. 19 2007,16:29
Okay, I'll try that right now.
Posted by cox_douglas on Aug. 19 2007,17:03
Sorry for the delay, this thing takes forever to boot.  I waited until the gui was up, then popped in the card.  lsmod reveals hermes, orinoco, and orinoco_cs loaded.

rmmod orinoco_cs; rmmod orinoco

Now just hermes is loaded.  pump -v gives me an immediate "operation failed".  Messages log says pumpd: start at (uptime...).

rmmod hermes; insmod orinoco

Using lib/modules/2.4.26...wireless/orinoco.o"
/lib/modules/2.4.26...orinoco.o: unresolved symbol hermes_write_ltv

and six more hermes related errors.  Orinoco module won't load.  insmod orinoco_cs gives similar symptoms, module doesn't load.

insmod hermes; insmod orinoco

results in no error messages, but 'ifconfig eth0 up' gives an SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such device.

adding insmod orinoco_cs, then ifconfig eth0 up results in no error messages.  pump -v shows PUMP: sending discover / breq: opcode: 1 / breq: hw: 1 / breq: hwlength: 6 / breq: hopcount: 0 / breq: xid: 0xed0be51f / breq: secs: 0 / breq: flags: 0x0000 / breq: ciaddr: 0.0.0.0 / breq: yiaddr: 0.0.0.0 / breq: server_ip: 0.0.0.0 / breq: bootp_gw_ip: 0.0.0.0 / breq: hwaddr: / breq: servername: / breq: bootfile: / breq: vendor: 0x63 0x82 0x53 0x63 / breq: vendor: 53 1 0x01 / breq: vendor: 0xff

Eventually terminal echos "Operation failed."

Any inspiration?  Thanks a million for the help....

Posted by roberts on Aug. 19 2007,17:12
If it worked with live CD but not when booting onto pcmcia cf then perhaps an irq conflict.

Check with dmesg | grep -i irq
also look at cat /proc/interrupts

One more thing before issuing any net commands, first look at
iwconfig and see if you have an unconfigurated wireless device.

On older hardware sometimes, I have to use the PCMCIA tool and hit the appropriate pcmcia slot with a reset. You do see both cards from this tool?

Posted by cox_douglas on Aug. 19 2007,17:44
Sir -- here's the output of dmesg | grep -i irq:

<4>PCI: ACPI tables contain no PCI IRQ routing entries
<6>OPTI621: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
<6>    ISA irqs (default) = 3,4,5,7,9,10,11,12,14 polling interval = 1000 ms
<4>ide0 at 0x110-0x117,0x11e on irq 3
<6>Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
<6>ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
<6>ttyS02 at 0x03e8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
<7>eth0: index 0x01: Vcc 5.0, irq 5, io 0x0140-0x017f

Here's the output of cat /proc/interrupts:

0: 78230 XT-PIC timer
1: 247 XT-PIC keyboard
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
3: 37783 XT-PIC ide0
5: 0 XT-PIC orinoco_cs
6: 168 XT-PIC floppy
8: 0 XT-PIC rtc
12: 608 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
NMI: 0
LOC: 0
ERR: 0
MIS: 0

iwconfig does output information for eth0, it is unconfigured with access point all zeroes.

PCMCIA Tool reports both devices, Socket 0 product info: "Cabletron", "RoamAbout 802.11 DS", "Version 01.01","" / manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002 / function: 6 (network) // Socket 1 product info: "SunDisk", "SDP", "5/3 0.6" / manfid 0x0045, 0x0401 / function: 4 (fixed disk)

Tried reset on Socket 0, then pump -v.  Received "Operation failed".

Thanks very much!
Doug

Posted by roberts on Aug. 19 2007,17:57
From your posts I have not seen you mention trying to configure the wireless card. Have you issued the command as root

iwconfig eth0 essid your-network-id

and if using wep,

iwconfig eth0 essid your-network-id key xx:xx:xx:xx

then try the pump command.

Or try to use the iwconfig GUI in the DSLpanel

Posted by cox_douglas on Aug. 19 2007,18:02
Yes, I have tried both configuration methods as root.  I am not using WEP, just mac filtering.  The card works well on my network, just not with the CF Card boot.
Posted by roberts on Aug. 19 2007,18:28
It also concerns me that you are getting errors on the net modules. This would lead me to think that there is a difference in the modules from the cd. Be sure the copied KNOPPIX image on the pcmcia cf is correct. You can do an md5sum on and the cf and then with one on the cd and compare.
Posted by cox_douglas on Aug. 19 2007,18:35
Sir -- I only got errors on the net modules when I unloaded them and tried to load them individually as suggested by Curaga.  However, I will definitely do the md5sum check and get right back to you on that!

Doug

Posted by cox_douglas on Aug. 19 2007,18:52
I checked on the md5sums for the CF and the CD, both are identical.

respectfully,
Doug

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