Bug 65911 – ipw2200 breaks net scripts in baselayout-1.11.1

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Andrew Ross (RETIRED) 2004-09-30 04:46:18 UTC]

The new net scripts in baselayout-1.11.1 don't work with ipw2200, because the function wireless_configure() in /etc/net.modules.d/wireless expects the output of wireless_get_type() (and hence iwconfig) to be in the format "IEEE something", but when using ipw220 the output is "ieee something".

It appears that the peusdo-standard for iwconfig output is the uppercase IEEE, so I consider this an ipw2200 bug, rather than a bug with the new net scripts (I couldn't find a definitive ruling, but I checked the output of iwconfig on my acx100 card, and also looked at iwconfig dumps found via google).

The patch (soon to be attached) is a simple one line change to ipw2200.c

[Comment 1 Andrew Ross (RETIRED) 2004-09-30 05:35:40 UTC]

From wireless.h version 16 2.4.03 (ships with vanilla 2.6.9-rc2) :

"#define SIOCGIWNAME     0x8B01          /* get name == wireless protocol */
/* SIOCGIWNAME is used to verify the presence of Wireless Extensions.
 * Common values : "IEEE 802.11-DS", "IEEE 802.11-FH", "IEEE 802.11b"...
 * Don't put the name of your driver there, it's useless. */"

Anyway, it turns out that ipw2200 (and, I presume, ipw2100) use this field to indicate association status eg. it will be "unassociated" prior to association, and "ieee 802.11g" after association with an 802.11g AP.

I suppose this should go upstream?

[Comment 2 Henrik Brix Andersen 2004-09-30 05:58:02 UTC]

Yes, it should.

[Comment 3 Roy Marples (RETIRED) 2004-09-30 07:03:42 UTC]

atmel and ratech drivers also mess around with this field - hence although while it may be fixed for ipw, others will also be broken.

For simplicity, I'm now testing against NOT READY! for prism54 is that bit of code is mainly to see if the firmware is uploaded and working correctly as some v2 cards do not work with the firmware properly (I have one) and a workaround is needed so people know there's a firmware problem instead of it being a Gentoo problem.

For a fix right now, you can get the net-scripts-1.0.2 package from http://rsm.demon.co.uk/~roy/downloads and use the entire package or just the wireless module included in the archive.

[Comment 4 Andrew Ross (RETIRED) 2004-10-07 02:53:26 UTC]

Thanks, UberLord.

I really think that baselayout should at least use the new wireless module before being unmasked.

[Comment 5 Henrik Brix Andersen 2004-10-07 04:26:53 UTC]

A patch for the ipw2200 driver which fixes this issue was sent to the ipw2100-devel list a while back. I assume it will be included in the next release.

[Comment 6 Henrik Brix Andersen 2004-10-07 04:29:26 UTC]

Created attachment 41275 [details, diff]
Patch by Pedro Ramalhais

Quote from Pedro's mail:

Here's a cosmetic patch for ipw2200.
- Changes "ieee 802.11" to "IEEE 802.11"
- Update the FILES file
-- 
Pedro Ramalhais

[Comment 7 Roy Marples (RETIRED) 2004-11-02 14:54:01 UTC]

This has been fixed in baselayout-1.11.4 - can we close this one now?

[Comment 8 SpanKY 2004-11-02 15:53:00 UTC]

you're a gentoo dev ... you can close these things yourself :p