Can't have wireless at boot

[thibaud]

Hi,

- I installed my wireless PCMCIA card following the ndiswrapper HOWTO
- I added ndiswrapper in /etc/modules (or something like that ) so that it is loaded automatically
- Running "ifup wlan0" from a root terminal under Gnome works perfectly

But, if I ask for wlan0 to be activated at boot, network doesn't work and
I have to "ifdown wlan0","ifup wlan0" to make it work. (ifup alone is not enough).

Thank you very much for this distro, it is by far the best I've ever tried.

[orkolorko]

The reason IMHO is that ubuntu is doing the script for configuring network devices before he enables the PCMCIA.
But I donàt know how to change its behaviour.

[thibaud]

Thank you for your answer. It is not a solution, but it helps me to find one.

How do you know that PCMCIA is started after Network ?

I assumed it was'nt the case, since the lights of my wireless card turned on when Ubuntu brought network up during the boot process.

[bmichel]

In file /etc/network/interface your must have something like:

# The primary network interface
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
address 192.168.0.92
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
network 192.168.0.0
gateway 192.168.0.100


where auto wlan0 says to auto start your wireless card. I experienced some conflicts with the integrated ethernet card (eth0) so I deactivated it.

You must be able to handle that through the gnome-network app.

[thibaud]

Here is the part of my /etc/network/interface concerning wlan0:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
name Liaison par onde radio
wireless_essid ma maison

I also had conflict with eth0 and I also disactivated it through the gnome-network app.

I tried to manage the 'on boot' problem with wireless both with the gnome-network app and by adding "auto wlan0" before
"iface wlan0 inet dhcp" in /etc/network/interface, but both ways give me the same problem. wlan0 seems to be up (ifup wlan0 complains), but the network doesn't work .

[bmichel]

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

Your wireless card is configured to use a dhcp server. are you sure that you have one ? else use static address instead.

could you see your wlan0 with : ifconfig

[bmichel]

Another point that I manage to be sure to boot on wireless: Activate your wlan0 on the default profile (unknown/inconnu) and remove the ethernet card from it.

[thibaud]

Thank you for your interest bmichel,

I'm sure I have a DHCP server. Otherwise, "ifup wlan0" would not work once in GNOME.

I saved my network profile under "original".
I removed eth0 from "Unknown", which is still the default profile.
I checked "on boot" for wlan0, which was still activated and rebooted.

I still have the same problem, once in GNOME:
* Network doesn't work
* "ifconfig" reports only "lo"
* "ifup wlan0" reports "ifup: interface wlan0 already configured".

By the way, with "on boot" checked, network need a long time, but finally reports [OK] during the boot process. And a few lines after, it complains about "unable to resolve name" trying to find the time server. Once in GNOME, Network works after "ifdown wlan0; ifup wlan0".
Witout "on boot", Network works after "ifup wlan0", which takes around 1 second.

When I'm in windows, wireless need time before to be available. So I wonder if Ubuntu doesn't try to early or doesn't wait long enough, who knows...

[Hendry]

What kind of wireless card are you using? My wireless SMC PCMCIA card didnt work unless I added the firmware to my machine. See www.prism54.org for information about obtaining the latest firmware. I just copied the file to my Ubuntu system and I had no problem activating my card after this

[thibaud]

I have a WN825G PCMCIA card from Mororola. The ndiswrapper wiki reports that it has a BroadCom chip and that it works with ndiswrapper 0.9+ (I have 0.10-1).
So, it seems that I'm not in your case, but thank you for your interest.