How To: Manual Network Configuration without the need for Network Manager

[kevdog]

Just some random thoughts

Do you need two wireless cards running at the same time?? Ok I guess I could think of some situations this might be needed but just a thought.

If the working wireless card is removed, does the other card work.

Ive used two different wireless cards plugged into two separate pcmcia slots before, (atheros and broadcom), however I didnt use them at the same time. I brought one interface down and the other up. Your situation is slightly different since your not even getting an interface name assigned.

I guess first step is to verify the first card actually works.

[underscoredavid]

Just some random thoughts

Do you need two wireless cards running at the same time?? Ok I guess I could think of some situations this might be needed but just a thought.

If the working wireless card is removed, does the other card work.

Ive used two different wireless cards plugged into two separate pcmcia slots before, (atheros and broadcom), however I didnt use them at the same time. I brought one interface down and the other up. Your situation is slightly different since your not even getting an interface name assigned.

I guess first step is to verify the first card actually works.

The card actually works - I've used both by themselves in the same install with no problems. However, once there are two cards present, only one works.

As far as the need - if I don't want to buy another card, for what I'm trying to do/play with, yeah, this situation I need two.

Thanks for responding, you're the first in about a million posts all over the place - any ideas on where to start after verifying the card functions correctly?

[kevdog]

Are these two pcmcia slots?? Just wondering if one slot is given priority over the other.

Couple things to try, say you got the same scenario as you presented above, what if you bring the interface down, modprobe -r the ipw module, then modprobe the ipw module, then check with lshw -C network? Which card is assigned the interface name. What if you switch the cards?

How many times in lsmod | grep ipw is the ipw driver listed?

[underscoredavid]

Are these two pcmcia slots?? Just wondering if one slot is given priority over the other.

Couple things to try, say you got the same scenario as you presented above, what if you bring the interface down, modprobe -r the ipw module, then modprobe the ipw module, then check with lshw -C network? Which card is assigned the interface name. What if you switch the cards?

How many times in lsmod | grep ipw is the ipw driver listed?

These are two mini-pci express cards (Intel 3945abg) - I'm getting the feeling slot 2 is getting priority. If I switch the cards, it seems to follow that slot. It's the first slot I'm having problems with.

I've verified this slot works however, because, in the windows side of this install - it works flawlessly - except, I have no use for two cards in windows.

Under "lsmod" i've only got the driver coming up once.

When I "modprobe -r ipw3945" then "lshw" - both cards show up as unclaimed network controllers.

When I "modprobe ipw3945" - both cards show up again, the second one w/ the logical name/mac/etc... the other, with just the same basic info. This is the same as it was before.

[kevdog]

Im just shooting from the hip here b/c I googled around and found nothing similar to your problem except my experience (which isnt exactly similar). However just wondering if there are windows xp drivers available for your device. Here is what Im thinking. Im not sure if you are hardware limited and only one device is going to work at a time, or its more a driver issue where two devices cant use the same driver at once. I just dont know. What if however we could make one device use the native ipw driver and the other ndiswrapper. Im not sure if this would work.

Here is what I was thinking however
Most likely the card not show is interface eth0
The card in slot two is interface eth1

You could probably confirm this by taking out the card in slot 2 and just using slot 1 and see if the device is assigned eth0.

You could then probably add some aliases in /etc/modules like the following:
alias eth0 ndiswrapper
alias eth1 ipw3945

Here is a reference although I dont if I completely understand everything:
http://linux.about.com/od/lkm_howto/a/hwtlkm06t03.htm


One last random thought
What if you just type
sudo ifconfig eth0 up

What happens??

[underscoredavid]

Im just shooting from the hip here b/c I googled around and found nothing similar to your problem except my experience (which isnt exactly similar). However just wondering if there are windows xp drivers available for your device. Here is what Im thinking. Im not sure if you are hardware limited and only one device is going to work at a time, or its more a driver issue where two devices cant use the same driver at once. I just dont know. What if however we could make one device use the native ipw driver and the other ndiswrapper. Im not sure if this would work.

Here is what I was thinking however
Most likely the card not show is interface eth0
The card in slot two is interface eth1

You could probably confirm this by taking out the card in slot 2 and just using slot 1 and see if the device is assigned eth0.

You could then probably add some aliases in /etc/modules like the following:
alias eth0 ndiswrapper
alias eth1 ipw3945

Here is a reference although I dont if I completely understand everything:
http://linux.about.com/od/lkm_howto/a/hwtlkm06t03.htm


One last random thought
What if you just type
sudo ifconfig eth0 up

What happens??

The ndiswrapper route is a no-go. That limits what I'm trying to do with the card. (Monitoring mode/injection/etc...). You may have hit it on the head w/ the two cards not being able to use the same driver, though I'm not proficient enough to know/find out.

As far as eth0 is concerned - that's actually the integrated broadcom nic and hasn't given me any problems.

Looks like I may be buying a PCMCIA card or another mini-pci express card for this setup. That sucks.

Thanks for your help though!

[kevdog]

What if you just type
sudo ifconfig eth2 up

[underscoredavid]

What if you just type
sudo ifconfig eth2 up

eth2 doesn't exist.
the exact error is "eth2: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device"

interesting thing though - i disabled one of the mini-pci e slots completely in the bios (the one that was working flawlessly) and the other card came up immediately, except in the system it had it as "eth3" , there was no eth1 or eth2. worked and everything.

if i could get the second card assigned a logical name, while the first card was working, i'd be able to troubleshoot if from there. i'm wondering if this is some sort of bug with 2 cards using the same driver, you wouldn't think so, but i'm not familiar enough with the way hardware interfaces with drives under linux.

[kevdog]

Thats why I wanted you to use ndiswrapper -- only for testing purposes. Im not sure if you can use the same driver twice, however it would seem logical that if one was using ndiswrapper and the other ipw and for some reason both network cards worked in this scenario, that it would tell me that it was most likely a driver or configuration problem rather than a hardware problem. Again Im not exactly sure how the kernel interacts and assigns drivers (or duplicate copies of a driver). Im just trying to rule some things out.

[SeanBlader]

Kevdog, wanted to let you know this worked for me in Gutsy using NDISWrapper 1.47 with a Broadcom 43xx on a Dell Inspiron 8500. So it looks like it's an issue with Gutsy's Network manager or something. I was also glad to see someone mention the change to iftab for Gutsy, I did see that previously as well. Any idea if Network Manager can be backdated to Feisty's or if there's a configuration fix for it somewhere? If not, at least I know it CAN work, nice job.